swapping 99 gauge needles

[mcgilles]

I'm tired of the orange, I like the look of the 99's red needles. I've heard somewhere that the needles on our gauges will come strait out if you pull on them, and you can just push them back into place. is that true? and how hard is it to get them in to an accurate position? if it sounds feesable here's the idea, buy a cheap 99 SLO cluster from ebay, and pull off the needles. with my autotap I can probably find the location for most of them. set the cruise at about 60mph and then push the speedo needle back into place, the tach I can probably do at idle, or even with the engine off but car on, to make sure the pin is in the 0 position, then put the needle on there. as for temperature, I think I would use the autotap to find out exactly what temperature the coolent is at when the temp gauge needle is exactly on the first line of the normal range indicator. and as for fuel level, I'd probably keep the old one on until the needle was perfectly matched with one of the lines, then take it off and replace it. that way I could hopefully get them all back on with enough accuracy that I would never be able to tell the difference. I have moved the needles manually before, with teh car off of course, and there is no resistance to them at all, just berely touch the speedo needle and it jumps 30mph before you realize you touched it. I woudln't try to move them while the car is on, will the gauge servo's hold the pins in the right place so I can place the new needles back on correctly? what do you think?

 

[99V8SHO]

Sounds right to me.

About the gas gauge...just go to the gas station, fill er up to full, then point the needle right at 'F'.

 

[mcgilles]

well, I'll have to pay attention to how far up the needle goes, it goes above the F line, I want it to be pretty exact, even though the fuel gauge is really innacurate anyway...I'll practice on the new cluster some to see how hard it is to remove and replace the needles and stuff

 

[SHOZ123]

You can paint the needles too if you want red. I've had mine off and it is hard to get the speedo and tach in the right position. Gas and temp aren't any where accurate anyway. Just be sure that you carry around an extra gallon of gas till you get the gas gage right.

What I finally did was to take out the clear plastic IC cover and adjust the needles accordingly when I felt things are where they should have been. Just be sure to just barely push the needles on so they come off easily until you get them where you want. Also do not push them on to hard when you are making it permanent as they may drag on the IC face.

Temp should be around the 2:30 o'clock position when fully warm. Tach is ~800 rpm when fully warm. The speedo I calibrated with a stop watch and the mile post on my straight stretch of I 57. Set the cruise to 60 and when you are doing a mile a minute you are dead on.

 

[mcgilles]

but would they still illuminate when the lights are on if they were painted? I think I might just use AutoTAP to read the engine speed and vehicle speed and so forth in order to set the gauges correctly. I might even be able to get them right this time, its strange, comparing the vehicle speed indicated on the speedometer is consistently 1 mph higher than the speed indicated by AutoTap...which I cant figure out, since autotap is reading the speed value right out of the computer. oh well, it gives me a chance to get it right this time.

 

[n8rsk8r]

another idea, take some painters tape, blue, green, or purple; the kind that is easy off stuff. Take that and mark the guage position by putting the tape on the speedo or whatever guage your taking the needle taking off of, just mark a line where the needle on the guage is with a sharpie or some kind of marker, just match it up the best you can. That is how I did my mustangs guages, and it came out great! Btw, the tach will go all the way to the left, it should be a lil below the line, actually cuttin the line in half. Before you take the needles out, do a lil investigating, you will see that the guages have stops that they cannot go past, you will understand why they call em dummy guages Have fun, let us know how it turns out!

 

[SHOZ123]

but would they still illuminate when the lights are on if they were painted? I think I might just use AutoTAP to read the engine speed and vehicle speed and so forth in order to set the gauges correctly. I might even be able to get them right this time, its strange, comparing the vehicle speed indicated on the speedometer is consistently 1 mph higher than the speed indicated by AutoTap...which I cant figure out, since autotap is reading the speed value right out of the computer. oh well, it gives me a chance to get it right this time.

My speedo reads higher by 1 mph than what AutoTap says the PCM is seeing as well as the NGS. I think it is on purpose and I like it. So we are really a 145 mph club?????

Do you log data with the AutoTap?

 

[mcgilles]

haha I've thought of that, I always wondered why it was setup that way, but I guess it doesn't bother me either. I've logged data before, but not too much. I only have the basic package so I don't have teh ford enhanced parameters, but I think I'm going to have to get them, its a neat tool but quite limited without the extra parameters (which are too overpriced anyway) I've been waiting to get the car to the drag strip, I want to record some runs and see how everything looks then.

 

[mcgilles]

I got the 99 SLO cluster in today, something I noticed, the needles are very hard to get off, took a couple of flathead screwdrivers to pry one of them off. then it went back on very easily, and came back off the second time without much effort. for those that have removed and reinstalled the needles, this won't cause any permanent problems will it? like I don't want the needles to start falling off the pins after a couple months...

 

[Vroom]

Use a fork...

Seriously. And leave the glass off of the cluster so you can fiddle with the needles until you get them correct.

 

[mcgilles]

excellent suggestion, I'll do that...

how about the needle's being loose though? would that cause any trouble. may not actually, I just noticed that after having that one needle back on for a few hours, its actually tightenend up on its own to the point I couldn't pull it back off with my fingers. strange...so hopefully it won't be a problem.

 

[Vroom]

I settled for somewhere between loose and too tight. I made the mistake of putting them on too tight and reinstalling the glass and whole cluster, only to have to get them "unstuck" as Paul Nimz mentioned.

 

[SHOZ123]

I have super bright blue LEDs lighting my IC. There are 5 bulbs that provide lighting for the clusters and these too feed the needles though light pipes. The blue colored lights did not change the color of the needles. I don't know why. At any rate the blue and orange look good together. Especially if you are an Illini fan.........

 

[mcgilles]

so do I, actually I was just going to reorder some new ones. do you have this style wide angle blue LEDs in your cluster?

or do you have these?

the second ones were not available when I bought mine. I've looked inside the gauge cluster, the light paths are to the sides of the bulbs, that's why I used the first LED when I put mine in, because you need an LED that will shine in all directions, the problem is these are not bright enough, you can see the light much dimmer in the tips of the needles because there is not enough light getting to them, and all the red on the cluster is invisible, so I think I'm going to upgrade to that second bulb, because the light output from those 3mm LEDs will be much more intense and concentrated, and on this particular bulb, they are aligned in a radial pattern, looks like it will shine that bright light directly into the light channels. looks like exactly what I need. just curious if anyone has used the second type, for a while I was nervous that they might not fit, but it looks like it will without any trouble. hopefully the brighter blue won't turn the orange or red needles to a purplish color, red needles on a blue background is exactly the look I'm going for.

 

[SHOZ123]

do you have this style wide angle blue LEDs in your cluster?
the second ones were not available when I bought mine. I've looked inside the gauge cluster, the light paths are to the sides of the bulbs, that's why I used the first LED when I put mine in, because you need an LED that will shine in all directions, the problem is these are not bright enough, you can see the light much dimmer in the tips of the needles because there is not enough light getting to them, and all the red on the cluster is invisible, so I think I'm going to upgrade to that second bulb, because the light output from those 3mm LEDs will be much more intense and concentrated, and on this particular bulb, they are aligned in a radial pattern, looks like it will shine that bright light directly into the light channels. looks like exactly what I need. just curious if anyone has used the second type, for a while I was nervous that they might not fit, but it looks like it will without any trouble. hopefully the brighter blue won't turn the orange or red needles to a purplish color, red needles on a blue background is exactly the look I'm going for.

Is that really all one sentence??????


I had the first ones and then ordered the second ones which I now have in place and am quite pleased with them.

 

[mcgilles]

very funny paul, so replace the commas with periods...I'm an engineer, not an writer haha.

excellent, I think I'll go order some now. I was thinking about making some of those out of the 6 led ones, then saw those and thought that's exactly what I'm looking for!

 

[JSIL1]

I looked on This site and think I should go with the one at the top of the second page,
WLED-B4 Blue LED bulb
12VDC Blue 4-LED Wedge Base Bulb (194/168 type)
Polarized
$ 2.59 .
I saw the link in another post but could not find the item in the green plastic picture in blue.