I am debating painting my gauge needles red so they will better match my aftermarket gauges. I have read up on what to do and almost everyplace recommends taking the needles off. However several places I read said not to as they are hard to get back in there original positions. Also I tried to remove a needle on a spare gauge with no success (didn't want to break it). I have seen other sights that just paint the top and sides of the needles with fluorescent paint. I figured that would be easy enough to do but am unsure how they would look at night. Finally has anyone had problems on there supra of painted needles not working properly/sticking? I have read that this can be a problem from the extra weight of the paint on the needles. Any and all help is appreciated.
Painting gauge needles
- Thread starter Jay C
- Start date
You need to paint the backs and it will require removal. It can be a pain to realign them. I've done it about ten times and its still kinda a pain.
The paint should not affect the needle performance significantly.
My recommendation would be to buy real aftermarket gauges and install them in the factory gauge cluster. That's my next plan and I've got one of the best stock clusters I've seen (led needle lights, painted needles, nearly no light bleed, etc...).
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The paint should not affect the needle performance significantly.
My recommendation would be to buy real aftermarket gauges and install them in the factory gauge cluster. That's my next plan and I've got one of the best stock clusters I've seen (led needle lights, painted needles, nearly no light bleed, etc...).
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You can get flourescent needle paint.
they just pull off. I set them on there barely and check there position and then push them down all the way when installing. dont seem to have much of a problem with it.
they just pull off. I set them on there barely and check there position and then push them down all the way when installing. dont seem to have much of a problem with it.
Removed my needles and I'm glad I did. Super clean look after painting them. No way I'd have gotten that kind of finish without taking the needles off. And all you need to do to align them is set the speedo to zero, easy. Go out to the car and hook up the cluster and turn the key on, set tach, oil pressure and boost to 0. I set the coolant temp to operating temperature once I warmed up my engine. Then, with the fuel tank full, set the needle to full. And that will do it. You just need to set the needles in place with the key on, except for the speedo.
It takes quite a bit of force the first time you do it. Otherwise it's not too bad. I'd wrap the fork in something to avoid scratching the gauge faces.
To take the needle out of the housing i carefully drilled the plastic rivet looking things and pulled them apart, then i just glued them back together. Worked for me
Yes I am talking of the cap. I'll post a pic in a second. I cannot get to the paint or repaint the area under the cap (area still orange in pic). I can remove the cap and glue it back on or paint the top black to match the cap.
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Ohhhh! I just very carefully painted the top side. Doing the bottom side would admittedly be better, but the top side paint came out really nice.
Well i guess there not really rivets, but on the underside of the needle cap there are two spots where its held together. I drilled these with a small drill bit and they popped apart so i could get to the paint on the bottom of the needles. Then just glue them back together.
I just taped mine off and spray painted the centers flat black
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Jay C;1998423 said:
I only painted the top of that center section you can't get to. The rest is all painted on the underside and looks great.
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I used tamiya red model paint. Most any bright red paint should work fine as long as you paint the backside and not the front.
Sent from my Moto X.
Sent from my Moto X.