Celica Forums General Discussion Interior Gauge NEEDLES

I just bought some new white gauges and I want to paint my needles blue. what is the best way to go about doing this?

use a sharpie on the back...

u remove the orange with nailpolish remover.

i had problems with light not going through the needles when colored with asharpie so i used glass paint and the needles are much brighter

cool. where did you get glass paint...michales? craft store?

did you put the glass paint on all the sides or just the bottom?

also...does the needle have a white led or is it orange?

ok use nail polish remover to get the ugly orange off. and will it still light up orange if i left it clear?

Use model paint to paint the BACK of the needles. I found a blue called "Cobalt Blue" in the local model store. Looks REAL nice. Nail polish remover and a cotton ball will get the old orange off.

The needles don't have an individual LED - it uses the gauge LEDs, which is why your needle has to be or is going to be the same color as the gauge dials.

And for the love of god, do NOT drop the needle into the steering column. That was the worst hour of my life.

you can also use nail polish to paint the needles

so if I change the color to blue but dont change the gauge leds then its going to be like orange blue uhh ugly somthing?

I figured if you want to have different colored needle from gauges get the gauges with colored see through part and get the white leds then you can paint the needle any color and it'll work.. then you'd also have to get colored leds for the fuel/temp gauge unless you wanted those to be white have blue and red gauges with a green needle.. that'd be colorful..

i have the blue LED kit behind my gauges and i painted the back of my needle blue and it doesnt light up at all!whats up with that? the tip of the needle lights up just a little.

Hey,

Did you ever figure out your problem? I'm thinking about doing this too.

Thanks

I just left my leds orange and painted my needles red and it worked out perfect
now my gauges are kick ass

Holy crap, Florida has a Michaels?

Random comment, I thought Michaels was a San Diego thing only.

Great ideas, I have to paint my needles.

Nope, I got a Michaels here too. 2 of them..

got one here too.

Hey buddy, what i did was:

Do 2 caots of blue sharpie (gives it the dark blue)

Then do 1 solid coat of light blue model paint fomr craft store. This way you still get the dark blue but at night it shines liek crazy. here is mine. looks lighter blue int he pic fomr the camera. is darker blue in real life

I changed my leds to blue and got rjautoworks gauge face, I wanted to change my needle color to so I did blue sharpie marker first, it was see through at night and hard to see, I bought a glass paint marker and it was still hard to see, so I did this, put to coats of blue sharpie marker then I put a good coat of whiteout, yes I said whiteout, the white makes it so the needles aren't see thru anymore at night and helps to illumate the needles, the stock needle had white color on the back of them too, at leasted my needles did.

yea billy thats essentualyl waht i did bu uised a lgith blue paint. but the origonaly orange needles are orange clear then a solid white backing

Great minds think alike,

I used white out too. haha it worked like a charm

next topic...needle calibration

NEEDLE CALIBRATION:

Put back to two connectors from behind the gauges.

With the gauge hanging, turn on the ignition to the ACC position. Wait for 20 seconds and the gauge cluster should calibrate itself.

Speedo and tach setting now is calibrated to be at zero.

Replace the needle, making sure it points to zero. Gently push the needle back on. Note: do not handle the needle by the arm. Hold it at the black plastic center while doing this.

Turn off the ignition. Wait 3 minutes and turn it back to ACC position.

Needle should move as the gauge calibrate itself and then fall back to zero.

If needle does not fall back to zero, carefully remove the needle and repeat this procedure again until needle show zero after calibration.

https://celicahobby.com/ubbthreads/thread.f_57137_0_collapsed_2__1.html

now i did this and it worked ok. my tach was off by 500 and my speed was off by 5 mph. so i ran my car for a whiel and put the tach on like 700 when idling. Then i took oof my speed to apint them and then they were off by 10. So i paced my dad going 30 and put it on 30

Thank you so much. This fixed my problem. I was messing with the LEDs on my circuit board and the tachometer stopped working, but this fixed it