I put some white face gauges in my car and I had to pull out the needles from the temp and fuel gauges. I have put them back in but they don't work. I am wondering if there is some sort of special glue that I should use, or some sort of trick to make my gauges work again.

Sorry I am so lame.

 

First of all, you do not remove the indicators to install those gauge faces...they will slip underneath.

The gauges are probably trash now, sorry.

 

+1. You're not supposed to remove the needles to put new gauge faces on. Once you do that, they will never be calibrated properly again. Buy a new pair of gauges or source some from a used instrument cluster.

 

Funny, I pulled my needles off with a fork to paint them. They work great now! The key thing is you have to mark the point of the needle so they go back on in the same place. The paint will add grams to the needles so you have to drill a little plastic off the back. Then weigh them.


OP just check over the cluster again and see if you missed anything. Most of the needles should have some resistance.

 

If the original locations were marked, sure. But if you just pop them off without noting exactly where the needles were pointing, you're screwed. The alternative to removing them in the first place is just to mask off the cluster and paint them in place. I actually used model paint and a brush to do it, but spray paint would be fine with sufficient masking too. As for removing plastic to compensate for weight, that's not a bad idea, but I haven't noticed any issue without it. The paint can't weight more than a few hundred milligrams.

 

yup I did the same thing as the op. At the time I thought gauge faces were "cool". My tac, speedometer, and boost gauge still work due to the fact that the "pin" that turns the needle is part of the gauge, not part of the needle(which might be just a S4 thing??). But the gauges that the pin was part of the needle are worthless now. I just superglued the needles in so they wouldn't fall straight down and I went to autometer gauges.

Btw when I put the gauge faces in I did a bit of research before I went ahead and did them and I didn't find anything saying you couldn't remove the needles. But then again I didn't look that hard, I just figured a thing that simple wouldn't be covered because it would be common sense. But you learn from your mistakes.

 

Ya, same thing here. All the gauges are fine except the ones that have the needles attached to the pins. I don't really care if they are calibrated perfectly, I just want to know if I am low on gas or if my car is going to overheat, lol.

So, has anyone actually fixed this problem??? I mean everything can be fixed, right.

I noticed some tackyness on the pins when they went in, is there a special glue or something? Any ideas that help, besides "go buy a new one"?

 

I fixed it! I took out the cluster and pulled out the faces. The problem was that since to whole pin came out a little lever that controls the gauge movement fell out. All I had to do was pull the pin out of the needle and put the pin in correctly. It was very tedious handling the small fragile objects, but it all works now!

 

i was gonna tell you the same thing, i had to do the same to get some gauges working on my white 88, but i looks like u figured it out. way to go using good old trial and error