As the subject says. If you heated them (as I have read some do) PLEASE let me know what part you heated and what part you pried on. I tried heating them and prying on stuff and nothing happened except the shafts on the water temp and fuel gauge broke. Luckily I have another gauge set nearby and I'm using that one. But I chose instead to mask off the entire damn gauge and just paint/mist over the needles themselves. Hopefully this won't **** up the tachometer.

Also, please post feedback on whether or not you noticed any difference in your tach's accuracy and whether or not you dremeled it to correct / prevent this problem.

Thanks!!!!

 

I dont think that painting the needle while still on the guage will affect accuracy. If i were you i would just mask off the guages and pain the needles with a spray balm from a hobbie stor. The transparent paints work good for stuff like that.

Good luck

 

!!!
painting the needle, on or off the cluster will still affect accuracy, youre adding weight to a system that was calibrated for a specific weight. Best way to do it is to weigh it with a digital scale that operates in milligrams or smaller, and weigh it, then paint it. Weigh it again, then start carving little bits out of the back of the needle until its returned to its original weight.

 

Use car model paint with those little paint brushes.

 

its easy as pie to get the gauges off, pry them off with a fork..... put a piece of tape on the gauge before you take the needle off, and mark it where the gauge should be when you put it back on to perserve the accuracy....

-Daniel

 

Um. I tried the pry approach on the ill-fated gauge cluster I mentioned. If you pry differently from me I'd love to get your technique. The little aluminum shaft actually broke with relatively little force on two of the little gauges (water temp, fuel level). I didn't try doing that on my nicer gauge cluster. I don't want to break my working tach, either. When you say pry on the needles, do you mean the black part that goes with them or just the white plastic needle itself?

 

The system was not perfect. The added weight of a light mist of paint will not affect the guage any noticable amount.

 

i always wanted to find some glow in the dark paint to use on the needles so when you have reverse indiglo gauges and don't have them backlit with the stock bulbs that go in the back of the gauge cluster they're hard to see at night.

 

My "goal" is to find some reasonably bright black light mini bulbs for the bulbs that run the front face lighting (the lower few), remove the rest of the backlighting entirely, and allow the day-glo fluorescent orange paint I sprayed on the needles do its job. If it works nicely I'll try to take a pic. But that won't happen until probably a few weeks from now when I get the rest of the car assembled. If this doesn't work there's always that mini fluorescent UV tube I saw somewhere else on this forum.