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I will show you step by step on how you would change your gauge to any color you want with ease.
Project in PROGRESS

STEP ONE


STEP TWO
open your guages
around your gauge you will see 5 snap and locks open them and you have...


STEP THREE
Unscrew all the screws to take your clusters out( about 5-6 of them)



STEP FOUR

carefully remove the needle and set it aside. Remove the MPH cluster from the assembly. Then remove plastic film thats glued to the cluster. ( use knife or screwdriver)



STEP FIVE

Plastic film is coated with some special colored film to give your clusters color, ussually green and red. Use sand paper and sand down any numbers you want to change the color. Send only untill the Number becomes white and no green is visible.

FRONT



BACK


STEP SIX

Use any desired color LED bulb instead of the original. Im going to use BLUE and RED MPH=BLUE KPH=RED. I would prefer to use HIGH INTENSITY LED"S WITH 180 degree viewing angle for better looks.

STEP SEVEN

Carefully assemble your gauges and plug all the LED'S plug it in your CAR and your ready to go.


COMMENTS FEEDBACKS AND PICTURES OF YOUR PROJECTS PLEASE


1996 GL 2.0 16V Zetec DOHC AIM s/n- DJWhiterussian
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good how to, but dont you have to recalabirate the needles for the mph and rpm after popping them off?


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I didn't do this to my guages, but I painted my needles red. Yes, you have to adjust the needle so it doesn't give you the wrong MPH. What I did was I put the needle on the guage and cruised around at about 10 MPH. Then I slowed it down a bit more and noticed that the needle drops off the gauge(falls rapidly) below 5 MPH. So at 5 MPH I took the needle off the guage and placed it back on at the 5 MPH mark.

I worked great and it seems to be placed on the right spot if you do the Cruise Control test(if you have it, you can put cruise control on at 25 MPH, i think.)


My ride(Cardomain link) : '95 Contour 16V Zetec DOHC, Teal , ATX Born on Sep. 4, 1995 86+ miles *LEDs mods are on their way!*
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SVT OWNERS: use rubber DR gloves or else the green dust from sanding will bond with your oils and smear all over the white faces.

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For the Sandpaper, what grit sand paper do we use to sand down the numbers? Also, which BULBS (i.e. from superbrightleds.com) are the BEST ones that work in there?

Last edited by m4gician; 07/09/06 02:59 PM.

1998 Mercury Mystique LS - Looking for SVT EXHAUST, SVT Rear bumper (silver frost) and ANY rocker mouldings (side skirts)
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Originally posted by m4gician:
For the Sandpaper, what grit sand paper do we use to sand down the numbers? Also, which BULBS (i.e. from superbrightleds.com) are the BEST ones that work in there?




I'm going to ASSume that it's some real fine paper so you don't end up sanding off the opaque paint.

WATCH IT WHEN YOU PULL THE FACE OFF THE SPEEDO!!! When I did the ol S&H gauges, some of the opaque black paint stayed on the clear plastic part of the speedometer, which sucked pretty bad (white light shined thru) since I had to put the factory faces back on since the S&H ones sucked. Because of this, I now have a set of gauges sitting in storage that I might just try this on.

Now the lights? I would personally get the widest angle LEDs you can. If you put the ones that shine with a narrow angle, you'll have the "flashlight" effect on the guages.

I went with the white 6 led ones. They make the gauges have semi-patchy light, but are WAY brighter.

I also bought some 360�° white LEDs. They are blue LEDs with the phosphor that is in normal white LEDs (to change the blue to white) on the entire outside of the LED, which makes them light up 360�°.

Ok, well, I had a picture of the 360�° LEDs... oh well.

Last edited by Big Daddy Kane; 07/12/06 05:02 PM.

Goin' Round Traffic Circles @ 50Km/h!!! \m/ -- 1998 E0 SVT #2119 of 6535 \m/ -- 2003 Sentra SE-R Spec V
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I'm planning on modifying my extra gauge cluster to see how good of a job I can do. This will help alot.

Now if I'm doing red LEDs, which ones should I be going with? From superbrightleds.com, they have 360�° viewing angle, but not sure if I just buy those or if I need the LEDs with a base?

I'm a noob when I comes to this stuff.


Tony 1998 SVT Contour (B/MB) #542 3L 1998 SVT Contour (SF/MB) #1266 parts car 2000 SVT Contour (SF/MB) #1533 3L swap to begin!
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Do you have any "after" pictures of doing this?


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