First off, sorry these pics are awful, no camera here, just phone.

Pop your needle off the instrument cluster like has been shown many times before.

On the back of the needle, you'll notice two small plastic bumps where the back piece is melted on.



You can kinda see them below the two vertical oranges lines there. Take a soldering iron and pull the plastic down to one side. Now just pull on the center pin to remove the back.

After you've got the back off, grab the base of the needle and pull up, it'll just slide up the two plastic pins holding it in. After you've got the needle out of the base, swab it with acetone to remove the color.

Now, put two pieces of electrical or other tape on either side of the needle to make painting easier.

I used an acrylic paint since it's what you can get in the craft section at Wal-Mart for 87 cents



That's what it looks like w/ tape on either side painted. I made mine white because I'll be doing white LED's attached for needles but they aren't cooperating right now, I think I bought ones that are too small for me to solder

Edit...PUTTING THEM BACK TOGETHER.

Slide the needle back onto the pins inside the housing.

Pop the backing back on, on the two smallest needles(temp and gas) there is no guide for which side covers the needle, but there is the metal counterweight. For the tach and the speedo, there'll be two prongs that go around the needle.

After you get it locked back in, just melt the plastic back over the spot you removed it from and it's resealed. YAY

 

nice, thx

 

nice.......i might do this weekend...

 

Nice - very nice.

Oh, 1 more very important comment

Please tell me you "found" the Cosmo magazine!

 

 

I'm anxious to see what this looks like when its finished. if you can get an actual camera to see the true colors of whats going on

 

ScionDad...it's the girl friends. Before she had a job that actually gave her hours, I just bought her Cosmo's to keep her happy.

MTcX: It is done ;)



Looks f'ing sexy IRL. The picture came out kinda wierd on the side gauges. They all look like the middle one does for real.

 

that looks great. So what color did you paint the needles then, I'm colorblind so sorry for asking an obvious question. If you don't repaint them after removing the original paint will they be clear and you can leave them that way or do you really need to repaint them?

 

I put them as white...to allow some distinction between the needles and the silver panel they're on. Otherwise it would have been a huge pain to see during the day. As it is it's still very easy to see out of the corner of my eye.

Plus, I have white needles on blue guages=sexy.

 

Sure wish I had done this when I did the LED changes. Sweet looking mod.

 

white needles look tyte

 

Just an extra tip: Use a neon red, green, or blue acrylic paint. I learned the hard way.

 

finally, putting "Cosmo" to good use, lol.

 

im liking those white needles has anyone done yellow

 

Looks good! I did mine blue a while ago and they still look great! good write up

 

I recently did this to my scion tc and now im not sure i put the needles back in their proper place. How did you know where to place them???

 

When I did my led gauge swap, I followed a tutorial I found on this site I believe and it described how to correctly reinstall the needles.


If I remember correctly, the proper way to do it is to place the needle back on the stem, but not all the way down, just snug enough to keep it in place for calibrating.


Once the needle is on you want to carefully move it back towards zero until you feel a little resistance and stop. It might take a few tries, but it's fairly easy.


It's been awhile since I did my gauges so my memory might be off. Run a search for that tutorial to be sure. I hope that helps.

 

That. ^^

I marked where they sat on the gauge face before I removed em.

And you push em down until they're close, but not touching the gauge face.