Speedo & Tach Needles - Other Colors?

[Duffman]

I did a search and found nothing...

I've seen a couple people's cars on here (would go picture hunting but work blocks cardomain pages) that have their speedo and tach needles in colors other than red. How, and what did you do? I'm interested in changing mine. Is it just a bulb change?

[Jon11582]

It's lit by the backlight. As far as I know, only orange and red are possible, unless you do some modification to the needles, like soldering a LED and required resistors in. I never seen a solara with any other colors though. I wouldnt recommend pulling the needle off at all because of possible caibration issues, but for those that are confident enough, and have some wiring and electrical skills, it may be something worth trying.

[Astro]

I haven't bought anything here, but they have some interesting stuff.
Silver Image Racing
Here is the needle kit they have.

[Fresco Bob]

heres a boro way to do it http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=24016&highlight=blue

[Jon11582]

heres a boro way to do it http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=24016&highlight=blue

Thats kinda smooth, how he put a piece of plastic under the needle where it shines through. Might give that a shot when I'm bored sometime.

Also, for the link that astro showed, thats a UV neon near the gauges, with the needles with different colors of UV reactive paint on them.

What I was talking about was more something like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayI ... otohosting

[RayCarlo]

I actually have done the needle color modification, mine are blue, it required removine the needles, taking the orange color off and repainting them blue, and then installing blue LEDs under the gauge faces, it seemed like it was easy when i started, but it was actually pretty hard to do, since the LEDs had to be ground down so that they would be flush against the gauge faces. anyway here's what i used

http://www.angelfire.com/fl5/import/indigloneedles.html

[Jon11582]

Hey buddy U did that man? I'd like to see some pics if you can scrounge a few up.

[Hsakuragi]

ya, if you don't know what u are doing, don't play with the needles....

[swimshady906]

Has anyone does LED's for the whole console?

[RayCarlo]

Jon, i'll try to take some pics so you can see it, one of the leds is not lit though so one of the needles won't be blue, one of the wires came loose from the resistors and i just have felt like taking out the whole thing and re connect it, kinda a hastle. Getting more and more lazy with age.

[RayCarlo]

here's a really bad pic taken with my phone.

[Jai_Jai_Binks]

, unless you do some modification to the needles, like soldering a LED and required resistors in. .

There was a dude who took them off and put something else in its place...this is from really really old clublexus.com ES forums....(yeah, we ES's are plagued with dying needles and dealerships want close to 7 bills for a new cluster)....Looked tackey....but it was a mod!

[impactX]

Mine.

I had to sand down the red color on the needle, repaint the back of the needle with white (like the Camry needle.) and I order a set of LED kit to put behind the gauges. In order to install that, you need to pull the needles.

Do not try to retrofit big LEDS into the gauge, it won't work. The gauge is pretty sofisicated in terms of how the light is distributed.