The Light up needle experiment. Not for beginer

[Ralphie]

Getting that needle to sit where it was and actually work is the hardest part.

If you take your time though i think you should be fine.

[crazymikey]

I don't know if it's the same for the Accords, but I had a Ford Contour that I had to remove the needles from, and to get them back into the right spot you had to plug the cluster back in, turn the key to the on position and wait for the lights to come on and then you could place the needle at the 0 point.

If you did it without turning on the key, the needle would jump up to about 20mph as soon as you turned on the key and then your needle would obviously be indicating the wrong speed.

[excalibur02]

Looks like a great project. First one I've seen on here. I did remove my gauges once and after that the needles never worked. Good luck and let us know if you figure out how to recalibrate them!

[blackex]

This project have been taking longer than I hope for. things had came up and didn't get to work on it much.. this is as far as I got . and trying some Ebay guage. lets see how it would look.

Got around to making custom circuit board for led light to sit on
start with copper board, cut vinyl, and etching solution.


apply vinyl to copper board and pour etching solution to remove unwanted
copper.

result


start soldering LED. what ever color you want your needle to be. red, blue. etc. in this case I'm using RGB led, just to see how it would look in different color. red seem to look better for me.

I put in as many as I can fit in small space.

Blue is not a bad look.



Oem guage look kinda out dated. I got me some Ebay guage, little bit improvement.



So far so good I think

[nope]

[QUOTE=blackex;2435273]
Blue is not a bad look.



that's rad and all, but having 2 led's pointed at you while driving doesn't sound like fun...haha keep up the good work

[DJ metadelic]

aw darn, I liked em blue.

[excalibur02]

Man I haven't made a circuit board in 7 years lol. Man that was some good times lol

The gauges look great so far! Very detailed

[CB7_91/DX]

Very nice

[HondAccordMan]

Wow that looks great. I did that same exact same thing with my G2 Legend. I made my own circuit boards and I think the needles came out of an audi A6.

Very nice work

[wherm]

closest I got to doing this was installing UV blacklight led's and painting the needles with blacklight paint. I liked it cause the cluster stayed pretty dark and only the needles would glow while the numbers and guages were still backlit.

Great idea! nice work!

[blackex]

closest I got to doing this was installing UV blacklight led's and painting the needles with blacklight paint. I liked it cause the cluster stayed pretty dark and only the needles would glow while the numbers and guages were still backlit.

Great idea! nice work!

yeah I may do something like that later. with light up needle
and black out all guages. even day time it will be all black until key turn.
that would require more prep and finding the right material. for now
Im ready to move on to next project.

[mj213]

I like the orange better. Blue is cool but it gets old.

[carps_accord]

that is badass! I'd love to have amber lit needles in my amber cluster, with the tach needle go red near the redline

amber for the win..maybe with red needles would be sweet.

cant wait for this to be a full DIY i will look forward to seeing this, because i dont like the green cluster we have.

[sonikaccord]

so to get the needle to change colors at different positions, would you just wire up different contact points on the circuit board?

[blackex]

so to get the needle to change colors at different positions, would you just wire up different contact points on the circuit board?

yep. depending how you wire up your led, if its RGB led, you can hook up
3 position switch, red, blue, or green. I'm ordering bigger RGB led so it should
be alot brighter and I'll use dimmer control to adjust to my liking. but for
now I like red the best. so I'll just used only red one. I'll reopen it back up
again later I'm sure.

So many project ahead of me I want to finish this one and move on.

projector retrofit
power seat swap.
new door handle swap
new paint
led tail retrofit
sun roof tilt
and more... I hope to finish it this summer