Reverse indiglo dials

[Prof]

Had these things sat around since last year waiting to go on the car, so no excuses - hot weather - week off work, too hot to dig so I did my alarm and the dials.

Dials:

These were not to difficult to fit.

1)  Removed steering wheel - I made a puller for this using a bit of dexion - 2 long 6mm bolts, and the 2 arm caliper from my pully puller kit.

2)  Undid the steering wheel cowling - althouugh you can get at the dials without doing this, it\'s just more fiddly.

3)  Undo the 5 bolts holding the instrument surround/switch housing, and bring this gently forward - remove the top to connectors by pushing the tabs on the side, and then you can get at the bottom two.

4)  Undo the 4 screws holding the instrument display panel, and gently pull it forward.  

5)  Swing out the left side first, and pressing on the plastic stick at the back of the round electrical connector - mine was black this side, pull it off.

6)  Work your hand in behind - this is where you get scratched to buggery , and pull out the speedo cable by pressing on the plastic clip - it will come off easily then - don\'t let the plastic clip go down the cable - mine did, and you will never get the cable to stay on (tip - it will slide down the cable and you can find it where the cable goes through the bulkhead !)

7)  Finally remove the last plastic connector - this one was white.  If your car is an auto, I think there may be a third connector in the middle

 Now you can slide the instrument cluster out

9)  Plastic face pops off real easy - no screws.

10)  Undo the small screws on each set of dials, work the new dials carefully over the needles, and replace the screws.  You need to route the little white cables around the back, or through the holes left be removing the illumination bulbs at the bottom

11)  To avoid having to ever get the dials out again, I replaced the indicator bulbs with a pair of high brightness green leds - 680 Ohm resistor in series.  And the same for the Hi Beam indicator.

12)  All the other bulbs can come out, although I did leave the one behind the speedo which is supposed to backlite the odometer.

13)  As the stock FC dial needles are opaque white, I painted these with a flourescent blue - looks blue in daylight, and glows light blue/purple under UV.

14)  On the bottom of the cluster are 2 screws - these hold a clear plastic light pipe in place - I removed this, and in the small gap at the bottom of the cluster, I glue gunned in a pair of 4" Blacklight tubes from one of those PC modding outfits - they don\'t give off a lot of visible light, but will make the blue paint flouresce nicely.  I also checked that they would not make the dial faces glow - they didn\'t which is a bonus !

15)  The inverter for the blacklight tubes was small enough to glue gun the the back of the instrument cluster pcb.  I soldered the Yellow and Black wires to the +ve and -ve illumination bulb circuits - there are a bunch of useful solder pads under the speedo for options that were not fitted - I robbed 2 pairs of these.

16)  The inverter for the indiglo\'s was a little potted box, with a switch and pot connected - I tie wrapped this under the steering column heater outlet,and left the potted box to fend for itself in the mass of vent piping and cables - it\'s not heavy and was not going anywhere.

17)  Now everything has to be gently slid back and refit is reverse of removal !  (Except that bloody speedo cable - I had to take the dials out to refit the bugger because I did let the plastic clip slide away !)

18)  Check it all works before putting everything back !!!!!

19)  Groovy part is that the illumination brightness control still works on the light switch.

Piccies are attached

Alarm

Can\'t tell you too much about this - it\'s a Prostar Gold with the 2 way pager fob.  Included are pics of the Window mounted arial - range upto 4000 ft !! and the pin keypad.  Fitting was a replacement for the existing toad unit.

[jetpilot]

What did you paint your needles with and can you see them at night, i have indiglo dials but cant see the needles!

[Prof]

It\'s Liquitex Acrylic Artist colour ( Flourescent Blue).  It comes in 59mL pots, but you don\'t need a lot of it !  

I think they do red (pink really) blue, yellow, green and orange

I painted it on neat, with a small brush.  Because it\'s flourescent, it glows quite brightly under UV light, hence the blacklight tubes.  These are hidden in the gap left by taking the plastic light pipe out from under the instrument cluster.

You can get the UV tubes from Maplins, although I sourced mine on eBay.  You want the blacklight variety - 4" long.  They come in a thick plastic protective case, but the ends pop off, and you can fetch the tiny tubes out.

These are about the right size and sort

The night time picture was taken at about 9.30 pm yesterday, with no flash, so that\'s what they look like in deep dusk.

If you have trouble sourcing the paint, I have the pinky red and blue pots, and can run into camberley to get the other colours

Cheers,

Prof  :cheers

[g.miller]

Hi Prof
neat job on the dials,looks very cool, but my shrink tells me, that colour of blue is not good for my carmar?
is the alarm fitted on your cab. or a different car?  is the pin thingy touch sen.?
Grant

[Prof]

Hi Prof
neat job on the dials,looks very cool, but my shrink tells me, that colour of blue is not good for my carmar?
is the alarm fitted on your cab. or a different car?  is the pin thingy touch sen.?
Grant

Cheers Grant !

The alarm is on the Cab - the little round keypad allows you to enter upto a 14 digit pin, which allows you to unlock the car - if you get it wrong it goes into a timed lockout to stop people endlessly guessing numbers !  

The idea is that you can at least get into your car if you lose the keys or worse still lock them in the car (I wonder who did that before  :Giggle )

The keypad also has flashing lights to indicate the alarm status, and the centre button is a driver call function - pages the remote to tell you someone wants you - how cool is that ! :cool

More alarm details here

[Prof]

the little round keypad allows you to enter upto a 14 digit pin

Me dumb - it\'s 4 to 8 digits - I used 8 - don\'t want to come back and find just anyone sat in me motor !