Celica Forums General Discussion Interior RJ Autoworks Gauges, with mods...

Last weekend I spent most of Saturday and Sunday mounting and fine tuning the gauges on my Celica. I got a Silver gauge face from RJ Autoworks with blue and red leds. However, I did not like the look of the gauges when the red leds where installed on the rev gauge. And I didn't like the gauge needles to be almost invisible when driving in the dark.

So I put the red LEDs to use in a different location - right beneath the gauge needles, now I got red glowing needles...

And I replaced the headlight indicator lamp with a blue LED, and the turn signal lamps with green LEDs.

Here is the result...

nice I did mines all blue, with blue turn signals

The picture isn't that great - the gauge needles look pink. In reality, they are glowing red.

that's something different, never saw anyone with dat before

I have seen that before every day i drive at night lol... welcome to the VW gauge light up lol.

real nice

dude plz post some bigger resolution pictures.
i really like that idea and thats how i really wanted to go with my lighting.
plz post some day and night pics man.
and where exactly did you place the red LED for the needles? is there somewhere for it on the circuit board? cz i know the turn signals just work with replacememnt bulbs

you replaced the turn signals with green leds; they weren't green before?

looks good!

thats what i was supposed to say.

i guess he wanted them more green.

Did you paint the needles at all?

looks great buddy. great job

yeah it looks good... But i want hombredelassrtas lighting that shit would be like day light

I liked the gauges in my VW Cabrio. That's probably the only thing I liked about that car.

lol thanks luis. i wanted somehtign that looked ocmpletely differnt from stock and S7 was the only way to go well that mixed with RJ's led swap

hombres gauges are off the chain i seen them in another thread and i want mine like his!

aww you guys are goign to make me blush. Joern urs kick ass. i wanted red needles but rj woudl only sell me full blue kit (with lcd) so jsut went all blue. BTW ur seb int he back, what is it, where get it and how much??

^^ im sure ive seen ur gauges before, but can you post pics again?

i didn't want to take away from this dudes thread but here they are (darker blue in realife, not as white as it looks. and the scrren looks funky for some reasn but its the same blue.)

sure they look real neat and sick.
anything special used or just rjautoworks stuff with the face overlay?

its AC S7 gauges (80 off ebay) then rj leds (were 35) then to paint the needles to make the blue reflect well did 2 coats of blue sahrpie (for dark color esp during the day) then did 1 solid coat of ligth blue model paint to reflect the led light

Here are some better pictures, day and night. Since the RJ Autoworks Gauge face have no coloring where the headlight indicator and turn signals lamp shine through, the color will just be the amber color of the 12V lamp. That is why I changed the headlight indicater with a blue LED, and the turnsignals with green LEDs (all from Radioshack). The needles are painted red on the side facing the gauges.

wow that looks awsome. great job. about the blinkers, arnt they liek led bulbs or something. what is the exact kind, how much, and you said radioshack right???

WOW! All these dash gauge mods look awesome!

I'm thinking about attempting it with my ride.

My only reluctance is I've read a couple of horror stories about the needles not going back on right and speedometers and tachs being out of wack. How big a danger is that?

decent danger j/p. ok here is waht you do. plug everyhting back in without the clear plastic on. tunr the car to acc, wait liek 30 seconds, then put the tach and spedo at 0. now pace a freind to see if its off by any. After takign the needles off 2 consecutive times my spedo was off by 10 adn rpm was off by 5. so for rpms i jsut drove the car aroudn for a bit then let it idle and put the needle at what it normally idles at, leik 700. For the spedo i paced my dad doign 30 and put the needle at 30 now all is good.

1 thing to make sure, do not push the needles around thwn you put them on. that cna mess it up. and if you start ur car and ur neelds go all the way around, tunr it off, and push the needle all the way around, then all the way back. so it knows it going int he right direction. any questions feel free to pm me

ps ignore all the typos

RadiShack had green LEDs in a mount for 12V, just put in plastic washers on each side of the circuit board, solder the wires to the contact points of the lamps and mount them. I think each LED is around $3 or less. Cheap update...

wow not to shabb.y may have to do it. i can get the actual led bulb replacemtn off ebay but its liek $15 so i said f that

Yes, if you have a soldering iron, lot of money can be saved by buying stuff from RadioShack.

Interesting how many eBay sellers try to rip off people.

Good luck with your mod!

thanks again for the info

Carbonblue2005GT,

What kind of paint did you use? did you use a sharpie like a lot of people did? I plan on doing this to my gauges too. Thanks in advance

I did not use a sharpie, I used the kind of paint used on model trains/planes/automobiles (not latex), about $3. If you don't install a red LED under the gauge needle, the needles will look blue even with red paint - the blue LEDs are very bright on the needles.

Be very careful so you don't break the stop pin for the needles, they are very brittle (I broke mine on the speedometer, haven't replaced it yet). Best Idea is to mount the stop pins after you are done with all mods on gauges and satisfied with it, and ready to drive.

same here but, i used 2 coats of blue sharpie and then 1 soilid coat of light blue model paint to reflect the blue leds. so dark blue during the day adn bright at night

That was next question, How do you remove the stop pin with out breaking it? I mean it's glued onto the stock face, right? Please let me know, I planning to do this real soon. Thanks!

It is not glued on, what I did was turning the original gauge face upside down (laying it on a table with pins facing towards the floor), use a small needle nose plier or a tweezer and push together the "lock pins" while pulling out the stop pin. To mount it on your new gauge face, just push in place. My advice is to not put in the stop pins in until you are completely done with your mod and fine tuning. When happy with everything, then mount pins, and then mount your gauge needles... (I broke one of mine because I had to take the the whole thing in and out several time while fine tuning the lights, and wasn't careful enough...)

yup and its a bitch if you use liek reveseglow or S7 gauges becasue the hole is to big, so i jsut put some take ont eh bac and hope it stays but RJ's fit good

Thanks Carbonblue2005GT and hombredelassrtas !

my only dis-like about RJ Auto. is the lack of face colors, you have black or silver to choose from. I only wish that some company out there would make more selections for faces for the Celi (and more selections of everything else for the Celi as well, those damn Honda's they get all of the fun and cool stuff) [/color]

Wow looks sick Carbonblue. I need your help man.. i just ordered the rj l.e.d. kit and i want mine to look exactly the same as yours when im done so i was wondering where you put the red l.e.d.'s to make the needles light up and also what did you use to paint the needles? Thanks a ton here is a pic. if you can point out where you put the 2 red l.e.d.'s that would be great! Thanks man.

i think he may have siddered new positions for them. i am not sure. and he said he used jsut red model paint

damn they just ran out of the silver blue for thr gt..just got some white and black...wonder if there gona be good also...

those look amazing!
i'm hoping there are installs somewhere on this site

there is also on www.rjautoworks.com [rjautoworks.com]

Great job man. Looks awesome.

I'd like to know where you put the red LEDs to make the needles red.

I used a soldering iron and melted a groove in the plastic the gauge face is resting on. Then soldered wires on the red LEDs and the wire for the red LED was soldered (in parallell) with one blue LED to get power. I had pictures I was to post, but the harddrive on my coputer crashed, and I lost all my pics.

I am changing to AC Autotechnic S7 gauges this weekend (unless an emergency should occur), and can then take pictures of the mods I did and post them. It will then be clearer what I did. It is a mod you don't want to do unless you are willing take a risk in srewing things up and pay $$$ to get new parts...

congrats on the S7 gauges welcome to the club

plz post pics of how you put the red needles LED on the board and how you wired.
thanx