hey I put in my indiglo guages however now at night I can't see the needles? Does anyone else with indiglo guages know how to make the needles light up or is everyone suffering from this problem? THanks!

 

I believe the instructions for the indiglo kits tell you to remove the light bulbs that normally light up the gauges. I put mine back in and found that it actually adds a new look to the indiglo gauges. You can adjust the amount of light with the dimmer switch located next to your headlight switch and you can dial in how much light you want. This will help you see the needles. I was thinking of putting in different colored instrument bulbs and seeing if that made the effect on the needles any different.

 

hmmm.....I wish they made indiglo needles for the 2nd gen. I can't see anything however I will try to see what that does tonight. I just can't see the needles at all at night

 

I have some Indiglo gauges that I about to install, I thought that the needles would still be glowing orange as always Blue wuld be nice!

What color is the background of your gauges, silver or white? I mine from ProCarParts, they had a deal on silver or white...

If the needle is not lit is this because you removed all of the bulbs? Is it possible to put in only the one that lights the needle?

 

It depends on what gauges you buy, but yes, it can be hard to see white on white.

You should remove the bulbs in the back that light up the stock gauges. They will do nothing for lighting up the needle, and just make your gauges appear yellow. Yes, you can turn them down, but then you lose the lighting to your light switch, logicon, etc.

Your options are not a heck of a lot of fun:
- Deal with it.
- Return to stock.
- paint the needles a different colour (like black). This one is the best of both worlds, but a bit of a bitch if you really want to do correctly. The gauges all face baically perpendicular to the force of gravity, and are calibrated as such. Adding paint to the needles will increase their mass, and can throw their calibration off. So.... to overcome this, you need to groove the back side of the needles to maintain a stock weight. As torque is a factor, the paint would have to have a uniform coat, and the groove would have to run uniformly across the entire length of the painted section.

I don't know how much, if even noticable, the paint would decrease the precision of the needles. Really, save the stock gauges are pretty much "dummy gauges" anyway, where you really only note the relative positions.

SO... I propose that you can paint the needles without a large effect on the accuracy of your gauges.

Good enough?

 

I ran into the same problem with my reverse indiglo faces. I searched around the net and found a place that makes glow needle kits for quite a few cars, http://www.importintelligence.com/index.html , but not for the FC because of the front lit design of the stock gauges. Since the stock gauges are front lit, the needles are solid white plastic instead of the needed clear plastic for the glow needle kit to be effective. I found the company made a kit for the FD, so the needles on FD's are the correct type. there are an abundance of vehicles that have the correct type of needles, but the FD cluster was easily had since many of my part dalings are with RX-7 parts gurus. I bought an FD gauge cluster and tore it apart to pull the needles off. The FD only has 3 small gauges and 2 big ones, so I chose to keep the stock needle on the FC boost gauge since I have an aftermarket boost gauge, I never looked at the stock gauge anyway. I love the way it looks, and it matches my Apex'i EL II boost and EGT gauges perfectly.

I got in over my head at first, but it was worth it IMO. I can take day/night pics and post them if anyone would like to see them.

 

could get some tritium and put that on the needles. (its the stuff that luminescent gunsights are lit up with, its like glow in the dark type stuff)

 

Could have sworn the the needles on my '91 were orange...

Now I'll have to look with my eyes open

Jimmy, I know I would like to see some pictures!

 

HAHA, your eyes are fine, the needles are orange, but they're painted and the inner part is white plastic.

 

Pheww, had me woried for a minute! Jimmy any chance for a picture of the needles in your car?

Thanks

 

yes please pictures would be great!!!

 

When I installed my indiglos, I took out the clear plexiglass piece underneath the gauge cluster that reflects light onto the gauges... I painted it black, because I didn't want the light as well as the indiglos... Then I painted my needles black with red tips... At night, they are just black, I didn't buy any sort of special paint... I just used Testor's paint like what you use on models... It looks nice and clean during the day, but honestly, the indiglo is starting to bug me. You might want to install a kill switch between the **** that adjusts the brightness of your indiglo set and the set itself so that you can turn them off if you need too... I kill mine when I am going to enter a parking lot and still need my headlights on... I don't like to advertise.

 

What was it about the indiglo that bugged you? Do you have the white gauges or silver?

 

That's exactly why I got reverse indiglo. The faces are silver, damn near white, during the day and black at night. Only the numbers and dashes light up....I'll look around eBay to see if I can find the ones that I bought...

 

These are the onle I bought from sr-motorsports

 

Those look pretty good Jimmy.

Here is a link and pictures to the ones I bought (actually bought both styles to check them out).

http://www.procarparts.com/store-lis...1&cat=3&sub=37





Not quite like yours...If you have time I'd like to see the needles you installed.

 

I have the ones that you just listed there only for an S4 TII, they look good and you can still see the needle easily, that's what that halo around the middle is for, your needle shows up as a black line and those little parts around the outside have breaks every 10 mph or 1k RPM so it's really easy to see them at night.

 

The entire face of my gauges glow...none of that reverse stuff for me. In fact, most of the time I turn the guages down so far and keep the original front lighting up it looks like I just have white face gauges.

 

can we get night and day pictures here? because I have the one that is the black background and I can't see **** at night Anyways pics would be great!

 

Dave Gibson @ fc3s.org has a installation how to on gauges, there are pictures there that show them being installed and day/night pictures. The gauges shown are the type where the entire face glows though...

http://www.fc3s.org/how_tos/appearan...lo_gauges.html

 

i want to order the reverse glow guages but I can see how you wouldnt be able to see **** at night with them. I also want to order ones for an n/a s4..... any leads, preferably ebay cheapies.
also, im in canada, anyone know of a company that makes the speedo in kms with the reverse glow???

 

just baught a nother pair last night off of ebay that at night turns the hole background to green or blue so that you can see the needle. just look on ebay, of course they are for a tII but you should find some for a n/a.