New Cluster - Rolled Back Mileage

[KAOS_3.0]

the stupid crappy faceplate things

huh? :shrug:

 

[Big Daddy Kane]

huh? :shrug:

Hehe... about 2 years before your time!

Some guy (Tyler from S&H Autotrends comes to mind) came on here with a sweet product he was making out of his house... guage overlays.

He made some for Thunderbirds and they looked pretty sweet. Pretty much a piece of colored transparent plastic cut to the the exact size it needed to be, and printed with the guage face with whatever font you wanted and had the lines in the correct spots.

Was a REALLY good idea, but execution sucked big time. The face looked AWESOME when I (and others) got it. Then I ripped the old stock faces off the plastic piece that distributes light, which ended up leaving huge ass holes in the white face for light to shine through that looked horrible when I put them back on.

Anyway, when I had his faces installed in my SVT, I realized how much they sucked. Like during the day they looked awesome. But when it was dark, instead of the light shining through just where the number was printed (like stock), there was a 'halo' effect going on that the number was opaque and a large outline around it was transparent for the light to go through... so on the smaller numbers/details (like the Km/h numbers), it was IMPOSSIBLE to see the numbers properly because it was just a big 'blob' of color. Since I live in Germany, it's kinda a big deal for me to know how fast I am going in Km

When asked about this, he FINALLY told us that white face guages have this problem because of the way they are printed, where as black face guages do not. Guess he realized before he did the group buy that most people would be opting for white face, so failed to mention this 'minor' issue.

Add to the fact that he had a hard time shipping stuff off, and some people paid and never got a product, some people got something other than what they ordered, yadda yadda and you get the idea.

He disappeared after trying to defend himself a couple of times just like any other scammer does.

Plus they were kinda expensive. Don't remember too much but I seem to remember mine were like $40 or $60.

SO ANYWAY... I fixed my problem of the messed up factory guages by buying an SVT cluster from the classifieds and then swapping all the guages into mine and then taking the guts of my speedometer and putting the new face onto it. Viola! $100 to have exactly what I had before. :blackeye:

I still have them lying around... might try to sell them on here in the bargain section.

But I think the same thing could be done with umm... vinyl... Have some kinda thick (to block the light from going through the face) vinyl with the numbers cut out or some really thin vinyl without the numbers cut out (to be kinda like how the older EL faces lit up) and then use whatever color lighting you want in the cluster... Peel off the factory faceplates (taking care not to ruin them like I did), and put the vinyl ones on...

 

[KAOS_3.0]

double post?

heh, but yeah, I know what your sayin now, back in the day you'd see a lot of mini-trucks with the home made custom gauge faces from your printer at the house and many of them did that with the general glow through the paper.

cool idea, often poorly implemented.

 

[Big Daddy Kane]

Ha, didn't catch that... internet sucks so bad here that it errors out all the time, especially when I try to submit data, so I hit refresh and submit again.

And that guy had it goin for him... he just didn't improve his product and bounced when poeple were getting screwed by him.

 

[KAOS_3.0]

yeah, my internet does that all the time on me too.

sucks when janky folks come to the boards and put a bad taste in everybodies mouths