Anyone cleared out the needles on their clusters? Not sure if you even can on ours I want to say they are metal.

-OR-

Does anyone know where we can get clear replacement needles for our clusters?

 

If you remove the needles you can gently scrap of the orange paint on the rear of the needle. I just repainted some orange on an extra cluster a while back. I don't know how good it would look just bare ???

22R88

 

I'm wanting to clear the needles then wire up some LED's so I have a glow needle.

 

I doubt it.. btw they are so brittle be very careful.. mine crumbled while i was taking it out...

 

yes you can I did it before I repainted them white, check my build thread...dont scrape it off you might leave scratches on it that you will be able to see...use acetone or alcohol..they won't light up good at all because the light will not have anything to reflect against, unless you dont care what they look like at night

 

and for this you will have to make a small circuit board with some LEDs on it that will mount directly under the needle, you will not get enough light on the needle any other way..I've tried it already and thats another one of my projects

 

Yeah I've done lots of research on them, thing if you scraped up the backside of the needle it would reflect/capture the light better? A lot like you would do with the DIY angel eye headlights made from clear curtain rods?

 

yeah you could do that, "frost it" but then it wouldnt be clear, just white-ish

here is a good example of how you would need to make an led board to illuminate the needles GOOD..its what i'm doing, except i'm going to use some PLCC-4 LEDs

DIY: LED Instrument Gauge Cluster & Glow Needles

 

I had looked at that exact forum actually. That's how I was planning on doing mine.

 

I love hidplanet.com I learned so much on there, you should get on there too! Your into LEDs and HIDs like me, great place to learn!!

 

I scraped the paint off mine with a razor and then wetsanded where the paint was with 1500 to give it a frost. I have blue LEDs in my gauge kit and like the way it turned out

 

Can I get some pictures?

 

Here's some crappy ones. The blue led lighting is still a work in progress. I removed the green tint from behind the gauge faces, and once you that it makes bright spots and dim spots. It's not as bad in real life as it is in that second pic though.

 

you have those dim spots because the light is not evenly distributed throughout the cluster...I used an LED strip vs just changing out the bulbs to fully and evenly light the cluster

 

I know for sure my non tach cluster doesn't have needles that can be cleared

 

how did you do this? i know i have read it here or on CustomTacos but id be damned f i can find it...Acetone?

 

its in my build thread, check the link below..yes or sand it off or rubbing alcohol

 

you are right, they are solid, I tried a glow paint that looked pretty cool but not the effect I was looking for

 

here is mine

 

I tried acetone, but didnt like the way it was working. What I found worked best was just some 120grit by hand to start, and then once the white started showing switched over to 400 grit. Keep in mind even if you use standard bulbs your gauges will be brighter in the center like mine. Because on top of the green layer is a specially designed shaded layer that is darker and lighter in different spots to make the factory bulbs look even colored, and you have to remove that first before you can get the green off.