Ok, when I did my gauge cluster I didn't mark where the needles were when I took them off, does anyone have any ideas on how I can put them back to where they're reading correctly? I've been pulling the needle off and resetting it every now and then when I find out how far it's off but nothing seems to work. It's probably something simple.

 

im wondering that too i also forgot to mark mine. do they have a stoping point if you spin them all the way to the right? i havent checked mine yet.

 

they don't have a stopping point. Just put them on and slowly spin them clockwise to 0.

 

I meant counter clock wise. Be sure to spin it 360

 

Yeah well, that didn't work. It actually messed them up more than what they were.

 

yea that didnt sound like it would work right. any other ways to do it?

 

I just took the needles off, started the car without the needles on and let it run for a few minutes just for good measure (I topped off the gas just before so I knew to set the fuel needle to full btw) and shut the car off. I started it again just in case and shut it off again, then put the needles on and they seemed to be reading pretty good. My speedo was up at 15mph and my tach was reading a little low so I took those back off and set the speedo at zero and set the tach at about 750 (since that's what it's supposed to idle at), both while the car was running, and I'm going to test it tomorrow. I'll report the results.

So in short, the coolant, oil and fuel needles...put them back on after you run the car without needles. For the tach and speedo, put them on as the car is running if the first try (putting them on like the others) doesn't work.

 

yea thats pretty logical. ill do that

 

Well the speedo is 5mph too fast, but there's not much I can do about that so it's staying. The tach is about 500rpms too low so I'll adjust that again when it's idling, the oil is pretty far off but I'm not sure what it's supposed to read normally, same with the coolant, and the fuel is right on as far as I know. All I can say is just keep adjusting it, one by one if you have to, til it's right.

 

Fill the tank, turn the ignition on, move gas gauge needle to full
Start the car, let it warm up, move oil pressure needle to what it normally is at idle
Move tach needle to what your idle is set to (mine is 750@ idle)
Move water temp needle to middle (who cares, doesn't do much anyway)
Move the speedo needle to about .95" on the circumference past the 180 mph marker as the full stop.

The needles will not just keep spinnning upon themselves (ok, they WILL, but only if the needle is actualy spinning and not the needle/motor assembly). Finding the "max" points of the needles is what you should've done before removal, but the speedometer is the only really difficult one to figure out. 0.95" is a good starting point....you might need up to +/- 0.5" though.

Good luck!

 

Thanks for the info. Although I'm not sure what the oil pressure is normally at idle, haha. And I don't understand what you're talking about with the speedo, although I'm going to leave it for now cause I'll hopefully be getting new wheels soon and it might be off again anyway. I adjusted my idle the other night, just a tad up to what I'm guessing is about 800-850 so I tried to set the needle there but I noticed today that it was off a bit when I was driving down the expressway. My USDM tranny was 5th gear=65mph=2500rpm and the JDM tranny is 5th gear=65mph=2750rpm but today it was reading 2500rpm again. The coolant seemed to be fine at first last night but it jumped up today, although I am having some drops of coolant on the ground now.