First I know I am a bit odd in my likes and dislikes, but I think many of you will agree with the fact that green and orange get to be irritating colors for dash lighting. It seems that every vehicle I have ever owned was one or the other. I hate orange, and bright green is a close second. With my Explorer I have just put up with it figuring that one day I will yank the whole cluster for an aftermarket set. In the truck function is slowly beating out form. That said, though I dislike white gauges, it’ll be changed to make my dashboard more visible with Dark tint and a habit of hanging out in dark forests.
In the Mustang I just couldn’t take the very dim green of my dash. It was difficult to see even at it’s brightest setting. I had no reason to want to spend 150-200 for new gauges or the 85-100 for overlays. I want it to stay black as it is, and I have the 140 MPH speedo so why change. But I hate green………………..and it is so dim……….
One day I am online and run across an article saying you can do it yourself. It goes on to describe the process a bit using this glass paint stuff. I read it and forgot about it…….Then one day I was driving the ‘Mustang at night and got irritated with not being able to see half of my speedo. I bought a basket full of 194 bulbs and pulled the cluster to change them. As I was standing at the kitchen counter talking to my daughter I was struck by the little sun catcher bugs she was painting. I picked one up that was finished and realized that the effect would be perfect as I recalled the article………
Off to work we go
Rather than tearing apart the gauge cluster to see if it would work I aimed for something a little simpler that I just happened to have a replacement for……The heater gauges…..
The case has been put together with plastic pegs and the ends melted over. First I had to disassemble the case …Meaning the white from the black………To do this I used a set of side dikes to cut the little plastic tab off…..This will later be secured with the use of CA glue, but in truth it snapped back together
Inside There was a plastic light diffuser thingy. This also needed the use of side dikes to remove. Underneath I was pleased to find that all of the green coloration came form a sticker which I promptly peeled off. This left it nice and clear. I tried lighting it with a blue 194 but it was not all that blue, so I painted the backside of the display icons. I found that at three coats it seemed to be as dark as It would get. . Now we set it aside to cure for 24 hours
Now the little turn knobs also had an illuminated pointer that was……green
Upon inspection I found that there were these little green crystal thingies inside that caused the white light bulbs to look green. I was not sure how to correct this short of swapping the little plastic thingy for a blue one. I tried but the color was off and it had a very weird taper to it that was hard to replicate. In turn I gave up and painted the ends of them with the blue paint stuff from Zaira’s sun catcher kit. When cured they turned a sea green that I can’t seem to get a good picture of. Here’s the pieces though and our cured Heater control panel. Nice and blue
Now that this had been such a simple and smooth process I decided that I would attempt the dash switches while I tried to learn more about Gauge calibration……(more later)…..
My mustang has three thumb switches which are active (the unused fourth would be for fogs in a GT).
These proved to be rather challenging to remove as the lovely electronic clips are inaccessible to release. With some careful prying with my cat’s claw I was able to remove the faces of the switches which allowed me to push the whole switch assembly out the back of the gauge trim bezel. That done I found that the headlight switch had a green rubberized coating on the back to give it color. This was peeled off after removing the little icon crystal (Note this is easily done by pressing from the back with a toothpick or small screwdriver. ) I painted the crystal with three coats and was good. The switch for the top and the hazards was a bit different. It was lit by LED’s with those little green rubber sleeves. The crystals were clear.
These were popped out and painted. To reattach the crystal I simply put a dab of black ca glue at the corners, press and hold for 15 seconds, and it’s staying put.
Ok Now all I have left is the instrument cluster. I am still not positive about calibration, but I have a GPS. I know what RPM my car idles at, and I have a picture of the position of all the other gauges……..cross your fingers for me….
Disassembly of the gauge panel is actually quite simple as it is all screwed together. Once I had the clear plastic out of the way I removed the needle on the tachometer. I then ended up with this plastic plate in my hand.
A bit of inspection showed that the face (What we see) was a thin overlay lightly glued to the plastic. I used a debit card to gently separate the overlay from the backing plate.
The overlay appeared to have the coloration painted on the back of it. I proceeded to use a razor to gently scrape the white paint away behind the numbers. It was still green. What I found was that the coat on the back provide varying levels of brightness for certain things. When scraped away my dash lights were acceptable as far as brightness. They were however still green as the green color was behind the white number we see on the front. I was not about to scrape that off for the daytime visibility would have gone away.
Instead I began to experiment as I noticed the green was much more pale.
Yellow made bright lime
Orange made a weird brownish orange color
Red made a brilliant fire orange, and with enough coats turned red.
Blue 1 coat is teal 2 coat is turquoise 3 coats is blue with little to no green tint
Purple was purple after 1 coat and plum after two (hard to see after 2)
That was all I tried
At this point I had got the desired effect and had matched the Heater panel for color. …….so I pulled all the other gauges for paining as can be seen here. They actually turned out fair so far….
Next I get to sit tight and wait a good 24 hours for this stuff to cure so that I can re-install the gauges. Not done yet though because why would I want all of this stuff blue and leave anything it’s original color. The next issue was the odometer backlighting. This got it’s green light from a little plastic piece behind the clear faceplate. It took some prying but I fanangled it out of it’s position and now have white backlighting for the odometer to match the needles rather than trying to find a blue plastic piece.
This done it was time to move on to other areas. The shifter backlighting. I feared that it would get it’s color from an insert or something in the shifter housing. Lucky for me I pulled out the bulb and it was a 194 white with a little green shield over it. This was simply replaced with a blue 194 and the shield removed.
Finally at least the center console is back together again…….poor mustang without a dash. This proved to be an awesome opportunity for some cleaning however. I also discovered the reason my allergies act up when I drive the ‘Stang. There was a ton of cat hair behind the dash. Odd that I never found any when I gutted the rest of the interior over the winter……….
Thought I was done and ready for re-assembly but alas the black bezel also has idiot lights. These were painted blue and purple.
Then all back together
All of the small gauges position was noted when the needles were removed, I put them on where they were. When I turned the key they all zeroed out as they should. With the key on I put the tach needle at O and started the car. It read what it always does. So I think I am good there. Now the calibrate the speedo via GPS and reinstall that part of my dash…….
I Tried to get before and after pictures with the gauges on un the vehicle. Unfortunately I cannot seem to get them to light up in a photo. So sorry, but you will have to make do with the pictures of the faces backlight as I was doing them. All in all it is a nice change and everything color matched well.
Total project cost $2.49 To replace Zaira’s sun catcher kit
Total labor………a lot
(Atleast the young un has her priorities straight....)
