After tons of searching and reading, and people trying different things. I haven't come to a clear conclusion yet. I know I CAN'T remove the needles from my gauges in my 2002, so that's out of the question. I'm really not good at soldering, and I don't trust myself to do that in my car. I definitely do want to try to change my gauges to light up blue to match my radar, stereo, and interior lighting scheme. Now when reading one of the threads, one post suggested (and i unfortunately closed the tab by accident and I'm not fishing through tons of links in my history to find it) that he took a dremmel to the top of the cluster and simply put blue lights shining downward into the cluster instead. The resulting picture looked great!
Listen, I'm not trying to screw up my gauge clusters or needles, and I'm sure there have been tons of threads on it but none of them have really been conclusive! I just want to have a blue backlight on my gauges.. There must be an easier way than unsoldering crucial instruments of my car. Is cutting essentially some holes at the top of the cluster and placing in some of my own Blue LEDs a viable solution? I know of Black Cat Custom and their gauge faces, but I've also read about horror stories with the holes not being big enough for the needles and what not. The less I touch the needles, the better I'll feel. Unless someone can personally vouch for them and confirm that all I must do is turn the needles to the 12 o'clock position to install. That'd be awesome. Either way, BCC gauge faces are expensive, and if $15 worth of lights from ebay or Autozone will do the trick, then I'd rather do that. Can anyone help me with this?
damn dude wish you were in dallas this guy can solder red blue green or white leds to any cluster for $120 here in Dallas. you might try to see if hes willing to ship ill send you the link when i find it
Modding my j since I found the org
Just order a whole cluster from Black Cat Customs. Hell, i have a hard time remembering that mine isnt stock(it's THAT good).
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$10 overlay and red metalcast on the needles.
Mike wrote:
$10 overlay and red metalcast on the needles.
$10??? Where. Did. You. Get that?? And it uses the stock lightbulbs behind the original gauges? I would think it'd be dim.
I was looking into those overlays on ebay... they don't look too bad, but then i started looking close, and i saw that on the 95-99 manual trans with tach.. it still has the apply brake to shift from park thing below the tach.. and I couldnt find any that didn't have that.
I found this one on ebay that I really like. I wish the face was black but whatever.
Ebay link!
So these are just as easy as slipping these over the stock gauge faces? Simple as that? I feel like they'd be kinda dim being that the light has to shine thru two faces now instead of one. Am I wrong?
It doesnt use factory bulbs, it lights itself. Easy to put on and wire up to the dash light circuit.
Mike wrote:It doesnt use factory bulbs, it lights itself. Easy to put on and wire up to the dash light circuit.
Oh @!#$ this is starting to sound made nice. How do you install these over the OE gauge faces? Needles to twelve o'clock position and slip it over?
SweetnessGT wrote:$15 ebay overlay + a red sharpie marker.
Took me longer to take the lexan shield off the cluster than it did to slide this on and marker the needles.
-Chris-
Ordered. Doin itm. Will post pics when installed. Pumped!
I'm gettin kinda pissed off here, nobody seems to make the correct gauges for a 99 manual trans with tach & digital trip. most all of them are wrong, except for a few of the cheap ones that don't glow, they just shine through. not very good quality.
Jordan wrote:I'm gettin kinda pissed off here, nobody seems to make the correct gauges for a 99 manual trans with tach & digital trip. most all of them are wrong, except for a few of the cheap ones that don't glow, they just shine through. not very good quality.
Yeah I'm noticing that too. What if you
buy this one and just cut a hole in where the odometer is?
Alcolawl wrote:Jordan wrote:I'm gettin kinda pissed off here, nobody seems to make the correct gauges for a 99 manual trans with tach & digital trip. most all of them are wrong, except for a few of the cheap ones that don't glow, they just shine through. not very good quality.
Yeah I'm noticing that too. What if you buy this one and just cut a hole in where the odometer is?
Cause that still wouldn't work. The 99 with digital trip is integrated with the odometer under the right side warning lights. it doesn't use the 4 spots below the tach, and a manual trans car shouldnt have the apply brake to shift from park warning
I was gonna get 1 of those for my 04 Cav but their only up to 110mph instead of 140mph so naw but I did have them for my 99 Cav with tach and they look good.
Skr8 Goodz in tha hood
Going up to 140 on an overlay wouldnt help you since the gauge would still sweep to 110. So youre just going to end up not knowing your speed. Black Cat uses Canadian clusters with overlays IIRC. Since they sweep up to a little over 140.
Well.. The holes that came on the overlay from Ebay were just a little too small, requiring me to cut the holds larger with a razor.. Then I realized that the speedometer needle was getting caught on the overlay, as it sits closer to the gauges than the other 3 needles, requiring me to cut the hole for the speedometer needle much larger. After all this, The needle was still getting stuck at random speeds after slowing down. I took the overlay off to see if the overlay was even causing a problem at this point and sure enough, it wasn't. Broken Speedometer... Buying a new cluster tomorrow, now into this project $110... Haha, guess I'll chalk this one up as a learning experience, as I can now disassemble my dash in my sleep.
How much does the BCC cluster in the last post run for? And how the heck do you guys get the pillar pods secured to the pillar?!
cluster is around 300+
Modding my j since I found the org
Just email or call Alex at Black Cat Custom. He is extremely talented, and easy to deal with. I love my BCC cluster. Here's his contact info:
info@blackcatcustom.com
1-866-943-8641
sunfire2NV wrote:How much does the BCC cluster in the last post run for? And how the heck do you guys get the pillar pods secured to the pillar?!
The full clusters run around $300 last i remember, but last i heard Alex wont make another cluster like PJ's. As i recall swapping the tach and speedo was too much of a PITA.
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Black Cat Customs if you don't want to remove the needles yourself or don't have acess to the proper people who can do clusters, I have only personally seen one BCC and it was the 140mph conversion it didn't look "custom" at all i mean it was totally custom but it fit and looked so damn good
I have done a couple gauge faces and honestly it's not bad if you have a diagnostic tool able to show real-time data, I have a pic of the first one I did, the rpm's are about 300 on the high side but only at the top, I account this to possible step motor damage as it was the first needle I took off and I knew I was too rough so took my time with the rest being sure to apply even unforced pressure and the proper tool, search led gauge cluster mod here and on quad4forum both info on diy led which honestly doesn't look bad on the 02
age is one thing....experience is another, i'm not the greatest in the world, but I can do it, and I can do it right
Tinkles(KGM) wrote:sunfire2NV wrote:How much does the BCC cluster in the last post run for? And how the heck do you guys get the pillar pods secured to the pillar?!
The full clusters run around $300 last i remember, but last i heard Alex wont make another cluster like PJ's. As i recall swapping the tach and speedo was too much of a PITA.
Yeah full clusters are $299-329 depending on whether or not you want the 140mph conversion. I wouldn't doubt that he doesn't want to build another one like PJ's, because he also said he didn't want to do another cluster like mine lol.
