1st gen Speedo needle mod!!!!!!

I'm sure that wasn't a normal fill-up. I've done this as well. You just fill it up no matter how much you currently have, so it makes it much more accurate when placing the needle at F rather than guessing where it should be without filling up.

 

^^^ Correct! Plus that was like almost 2 years ago lol! Gas at that time was around $2.75 if I remember correctly.

 

So if I understand correctly all you do to set the needles is move them in the direction they need to go?? And if I get blue bulbs ad paint my needles white they will glow blue at night and white in the day when the lights are off? I've got the black background for my cluster btw

 

In order to set the needles you have to take them off the pin and adjust them accordingly. If you just move them while still on the pin they will just go right back to where they were. And I would assume that by painting the needles white they would light up whatever color the bulbs are. That combo would look pretty sick!!! Keep us posted!

 

Thanks for the quick reply! That makes sense now I know tere is a pin and what not. And I hope so I just ordered the led off eBay yesterday so it might be a week or so until I post some pics

 

Good deal!! Hope everything turns out well! Ill be waiting on the pictures!

 

x2

 

I tried this mod....broke one of the needles off of the metal pin so I guess I'll be replacing the whole cluster asap!

 

I did this mod recently but never pulled the needles. Acetone and q tips will take the old paint right off. Applying the new paint was difficult but doable.

Paint removed. I used this idea to mask at first but blue painters tape was much easier.









Blue on blue makes night time visibility of the needles a little harder but not impossible.

 

Very nice!!!!! I need to do my 4runners but never seem to have the time anymore. I originally thought of using something like acetone, but was scared it would eat the needles up. Glad to see you had no issues! They look awesome!

 

I was just about to ask why you couldn't do this mod just as easy without messing with taking the needles off

looks great

did I miss something? why do you need to acetone the needles? cant you just paint a color over the white that's on it? I mean its supposed to be see through paint on it for them to light up.

I just wouldn't want to do more then just the minimum to reduce the chances of messing up the gages by dripping acetone on em

 

I don't think it ate the needles but I was careless on my second attempt painting it and chipped the tip of the gas needle off.

Also I had to open the dash up twice because the paint dried to the little black stoppers and the speedo/tach needles weren't moving when I put it all back together originally.

Acetone was used to remove the original orange paint.

 

You could just paint the front. However like you said you would need a transparent paint. If you paint the rear of the needle which is how it is factory you can use any paint you have handy and they will still light up at night. And the acetone is to get the factory paint off the needle.

 

I wish I could do that with MY Tacoma. It's a 97 and the needles are not PAINTED orange, the plastic IS orange. Not like the newer 1st gen where the needle is transparent, with a painted surface. Looks nice!

 

ohh ok so your painting the back of the needle not the front, I had not understood that part

 

Dang Bill I forgot about the older tacoma having those needles. I wonder if the newer style needles could be swapped over?

 

Don't know. Might have to take a look at that. Would be an interesting conversion!

 

Now I will be looking for an instrument panel in the junk yard that I can grab to try and paint the needles on That way if I screw it up, no big deal! if it works, swap it in to my Taco.

 

So I know this is an old thread but I'm hoping to revive it. I'm currently swapping a factory cluster in with a tach. I know I could have gone aftermarket but I like the O.E.-ish look. Also mine is a cable driven speedo (near impossible to find one with a tach). I have a 2.7 manual 4x4, the donor was a 6cyl manual 4x4 (completely totaled and the dash was crunched a little so 2 tabs off the cluster broke). I've heard people say the differing number of pistons "affects how it reads". But no explanation of why or how.

So here is my experience so far. I attached a picture of the back of my old cluster. After disassembling the "new" cluster it appeared to be a multiple application housing.

You can see in the middle where the PRND12L gear lights would be on an automatic with a column mounted shifter. Also the faceplate is labeled "6cyl". Any ideas why?


I was able to pull my odometer and swap it in to keep my mileage the same while acquiring a rolling trip.

In this last pic you can see the tip of the speedo unit where my plastic boring orange needle goes. I can't see a way of swapping to the clear painted needle without removing the "big tip". But I've pulled on it with some force and it won't budge. Am I stuck with 1 boring needle?

So far I don't see how the piston count changes the gauge at all. It was PnP and everything reads. Although I'm not sure if everything is accurate or not. Did I waste my time and is there some underlying reason it's not possible to do this?
Or is it simply swapping in a face plate that says "4cyl" in the upper corner?
Is there a way to remove that "big tip" on the speedo unit?

Anyway, hope to get some sort of response. Been around the forum a while but just finally made a profile and feel like I have something worth conversing over rather than BS about something completely unrelated to anything tacoma.

 

Doing this (once again), only scraped the mph & rpm needles, was really worried that I would break off my engine temp, and gas gauge so I didn't do it. Forgot to readjust but I will fix this next week.