jimmydanny

Is it any way of either changing the color (getting rid of the orange), or changing the whole cluster (everything or just the gauges) on an FC?

I am really tired of the orange color, it is too intense and boring at the same time. And I prefer xenon white, especially with my plans for the car (white pearl exterior, black dash, white door panels and white seats with black details, all leather). Having orange instrument lights destroys the feeling, I dont want orange seats and exterior if you know what I mean

solareon

iTrader: (1)

cyber stork makes a replacement gauge face plate and clear plastic cover. then you can do a needle swap and change out the lights and get a white and black modern look

jjwalker

White seats? You are going to have *** funk all over your seats in no time ( pardon my french ). White is terrible for leather interior, not that it doesn't look good so don't get me wrong, but that is going to be a hell of thing to keep up and clean.

Black leather tends to crack for obvious reasons. I'd suggest black and tan interior. Your plan sounds like it would look awesome, but I see keeping it up being brutal and meticulous.

MadScience_7

I got some of these ebay special and just took all of the illumination bulbs out of the gauge cluster. Can't see the odometer at night though. [/rice]

jimmydanny

what about the logicon, the turn signal switch-thingy and so on?

btw, saab uses something so close to white in it's cars, and I havent heard any complaints yet.

clokker

iTrader: (2)

I've been looking into this for several months (yes, I'm slow... but thorough)- here are some thoughts for you to consider.

The stock gauge cluster has orange overlays in the dial faces so changing the bulbs doesn't get you anywhere, the color is built into the gauge.
The easiest path by far is the Indiglo type gauge overlays mentioned above.

I tried a set from eBay and didn't care for them but it's possible that there are better quality versions available. I thought the printing on mine was smeary and the overall effect kind of garish.

A second method is to make a whole new gauge panel using aftermarket gauges that already look the way you want.
Success here is totally dependent on your fabrication skills...it's relatively easy to make a nice but obviously non-stock panel, much more difficult to masquerade as OEM.
Two of the gauges will present obstacles as well.
Mazda uses an oddball ohm range for the fuel level and finding an aftermarket gauge that will work with the stock sending unit will be tough.
A bigger issue is the speedo...ours is mechanical, most aftermarket are not.

I'm not even sure you can get a suitable signal from the stock ECU to run such a speedo, I suspect you'd need an upgraded/standalone engine management system to do so.
I haven't looked too far into this since it's not the way I'm going to go.

The third- and most difficult by far- method would be grafting the entire gauge cluster from one car into another.
This is actually what I'm trying to do but for completely different reasons than you.
I'm not far enough along to offer any specific advice other than "good luck".

Excellent point.
A truly pro job would include all of the secondary lighting too...possibly the hardest part of the whole project.

jimmydanny

I got the original gauges out, so I'm going to scan them, make a vinyl of the scan (with the numbers changed from orange to blank). Then I will grind down the black and orange plastic on top of the clear plastic "disc", and then apply the vinyl on top of the plastic disc.

Then we can take from there

jimmydanny

White lights on black gauges, white and black interior, white car, gunmetal rims Since I got cab, a carbon fiber lip and hood might be very nice here

-Crash-

lol wow you guys come on, it it well known (or at least i thought i was lol) that the gauge faces on cars this year (late 80's early 90's) only have a color coating on the back of them to diffuse the light and give them their color, all you have to do is sand the back of the gauge faces down with high grit sand paper and ether recolor them or use colored bulbs lol people have even used a colored marker to color the back of them and it works great.

jimmydanny

Sorry, but these are not like that. They are colored with orange on the blank plastic, then the black on top, and the black is etched away so the numbers show in orange

jackhild59

iTrader: (7)

Yeah, that's right. Because Saab is such a .... success story.

Saab is the Studebaker of Europe.

jimmydanny

Saabs cars are not too much wrong with, or anything, it has just been ignored by GM too long, so they never made the new models before they went bankrupt. But now they got it going again, I like the new 9-5