Tech Article: Replacing stock gauge faces.

[Blackcrow64]

Well guys, I got bored the other morning before work so I decided to do this tech article. To some it may be a rather simple process, but to somebody who has never done it before it can be quite intimidating I'm sure. I found it to be quite simple but decided to do a tech article anyways...

Ok enough of that here it is... How to replace your stock gauge faces with aftermarket ones... Estimate time: 30 minutes - 1 hour.

Time will vary with complications. lol


First off lets get the disclaimer out of the way... I am in no way responsible for any damage that may occur to anything that you may touch during this process... Including yourself. lol

All pictures are at the bottom of this article and can be referred to by their "picture #".



Step 1.

First of all you need a few things. You will need a smaller sized phillips screwdriver, a flathead screwdriver, a pair of needle-nose plyers, a needle removal tool, (picture 4) and possibly a hot glue gun... You won't know on the last one until its time to need it. lol

Also make sure that your new gauge faces are the CORRECT faces to match your stock ones. You don't wanna get it all back together and then kick youself in the head cause you put ones in for a non-turbo/turbo etc... Make sure also that none of your new gauge faces are damaged before installing them.


Step 2.

Ok, so the first thing you need to do is disassemble your gauge pod. If you look at the included pictures you will notice that all the way around the pod there are tabs that you squeeze in to release from the lower layer. The pod is split into 3 layers. The clear protective cover, the gauge bezel, and the pod base. The gauge faces are mounted to the pod base. So first remove the clear protective cover by squeezing in the tabs and work your way around the pod so to pull the cover straight up and off. Do not pull off one side and tilt it to pull off the other side or you will break the tabs on the opposite side... Next, remove the gauge bezel in the same manner. You will then have something that looks like the 6th picture.


Step 3.

Next we will remove the gauge needles. Carefully slid your needle removal tool under the base of the gauge needle and lightly pry it up and off. Make sure to lay your needles in an order that you can remember exactly where each of them came from...


Step 4.

Now that all the needles are off we need to remove the needle stops from the stock gauge faces. You must be incredible careful with removing these. Take the plyers and grasp the needle stop and pull straight up on it. If you do it correctly the stop should pry out through the stock gauge face without damaging the stop. It will only slightly enlarge the hole in the stock face that you will probably be discarding after this anyways... If you are lucky you will get it out with no problems. If you are unlucky then your name is Brian and you have a short temper for things that break. You will then hurl things around the room and throw out many choice words which are not suitable for your eyes to view in this article... After you get that out of your system you will realize that you can fix it with a simple hot glue gun. The stops are pretty much designed like a rivit. If you do not know what a rivit is or how it works then don't worry about it. If you know how a rivit works then, then you will understand why the backing to the stop broke off on me... (picture 11)

Ok, so you can easily remedy this disaster by sticking the stop through the hole on the new gauge face and applying a dab of hot glue on the backside to, in a sense, fix the backing. I ended up having to do this for both the speedometer and tachometer.


Step 5.

Ok, now your ready to pull off the old gauge faces. Do not rush this part. The old gauges have stick pads on the backside and the faces will rip if you rush this. I kept my old faces just for the heck of it. Anyways, use the other end of you needle removal tool and slowly slide it under the gauge face and move towards the center slowly... (picture 13) The stick pads are on each side of the center of the face. The tachometer and speedometer are the only two that you remove this way...


Step 6.

Now its time to remove you boost/oil pressure gauge face. I will tell you right now before you take any screws out. DO NOT TIP THE GAUGE POD DURING REMOVAL OF THIS GAUGE FACE! There are 4 tiny phillips head screws on each corner of the face. Pull all 4 out and the gauge face lifts right off with no problem. Note that the two screws on the right side are much longer than the two on the left. There is a good reason for the two being longer. At the very bottom of the assembly there is a long metal tab that has two holes in that are threaded.(picture 15) Once you remove the long screws this piece will just set in the bottom of the pod. Once again, if you are lucky it will not move. If you are unlucky though, you shall once again be Brian and hurl many objects including your digital camera while attempting to fix this problem. In the sad event that your metal tab moves you will need some long skinny screwdrivers or something to manuevour the piece around in the bottom underneath of things. You cannot see if the holes will be lined up again. You can only see the edge of the piece and get it lined up close. The only real way to get it back into the metal tab is trial and error. So, mount your new gauge face in place and start poking those screws down thru it until you get them back in. Took me like 5 minutes I think for 2 screws.


Step 7.

Now its time to take out the fuel/water temp gauge face. This one is simpler than the other yet at the same time it has its own twist to be removed. If you notice on yours, the speedometer mounting piece is covering the top left screw on the gauge face you are about to remove. To do this you will need to remove the entire speedometer mounting bracket. This is why we installed the boost/oil pressure gauge face first. Now you can flip the entire pod over and you will see 4 screws on the backside. (picture 16) Remove these screws and the speedometer mounting bracket and odometer assembly should all come out the front together as one piece. You will then have it looking like this. (picture 17)

As tempting as it may seem, do not screw with your odometer. If you do, your odometer will give you STD's and the government will come take you away and give you a nice 10'x10' room with a man that enjoys anal expeditions. If you get my drift...

So, once you have that all out remove your 4 screws for the gauge face. Again, it will lift out quite easily and then you can put your new one in its place. Now, I'm not sure if all of them are like this due to the simple fact that some people are too stupid to figure out how to get that top left corner screw out or what. But my new gauge face did not include a hole for that top left screw. Instead the corner was cut short. I shall assume that some people remove their old gauge faces by simple cutting that corner with a blade or tearing it? I thought that to be the half-assed way, so we do it my way instead. Now that you have the new gauge face in you can reassemble your speedometer mount and your un-molested odometer back into the pod. Installation is the reverse of removal... And no, I will not cover the reversing of those steps. lol


Step 8.

Now it is time to reinstall your tachometer and speedometer gauge faces. This is rather simple. If you would like to put a dab of anything sticky on the backside to better hold them in place, feel free to do so. I didn't use anything as there was small sticky spots left from the original sticky pads that were on the old gauge faces. Anyways, these gauge faces should just slide down into place very easily. (picture 18)


Step 9.

Now its time to reinstall your gauge needles. But wait, don't rush this part because its not as simple as just throwing them back on there. Remember, you are dealing with electric gauges here. Recalibration of the needles may be in order depending on how far off they could be. Mine were kind of off. Here is how I fixed the calibration... I'm not sure if this is the correct way to do it or not but it works. I put the needles back on with everything at zero or empty as they should be when the car is off. I then turn the needle up to a certain point on the gauge and release it. It will quickly drop back down to the needle stops. If the needle smacks the needle stop a good bit then you need to pull the needle off again and move it up some and try it again. The needle should not smack the needle stop or stop way before it. The needle should quickly drop but slow down in speed as it nears the needle stop. It should barely be moving as it comes within 1/16th of the needle stop, but should continue at that barely moving speed until it rests onto the needle stop. (picture 19) This is how I "recalibrated" my needles. Whether or not this is the correct method is unknown to me. In all theory it should be correct though. If not then I'm sure there are other tech articles online on how to correctly recalibrate them.


Step 10.

So now everything should be back together and the pod should be ready to reassemble. First, pick up your pod and move it around some to ensure that everything has been reconnected and in place as it should. Once you have verified that then you can reattach the gauge bezel by sliding it straight down into place. It will be in once you hear the tabs all clicking into place. I worked my way all around the edges squeezing it extra to ensure that they all clicked back into place. (picture 20) Then I looked over my gauges to double check that everything is in its corrent places. Once I verified this I went ahead and reinstalled the clear protective cover in the same manner as the gauge bezel. Once I had it all together I again checked everything and moved it all around to make sure everything was tight and in place. (picture 21)


There you have it folks. 10 easy, detailed steps on how to change out your stock gauge faces for aftermarket ones. For those of you who have those electro-luminescent kind; You will need to run the wires out the back and onto a power and ground lead from elsewhere in the car. I do believe they also include a box for dimming those lights? I'm not sure, but I think that these gauges are such a better swap than those electro-luminescent ones.

I hope you guys enjoyed the article. If you have any questions in regards to this article, feel free to PM me.


Your future supreme world leader,
-Blackcrow64




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[Trueeclipse]

it is simple but it looks great, I sure could have used that when I installed my gauge faces!

Good job man.

[Blackcrow64]

Originally Posted by Trueeclipse

it is simple but it looks great, I sure could have used that when I installed my gauge faces!

Good job man.

Thanks. Yeah it is simple, yet so many people would be afraid to tear that thing apart... I know just a matter of 2 years ago I woulda been scared to death to even think about taking the gauge pod apart. lol

[david-b]

One thing with the calibration of the needles. If you have a datalogger or DSMLink, it shows the RPM and MPH. You can take the needles off, and while driving, set the needles according to the logger.

The way I originally done it was let my warm up and put the needle at the normal idle position. Worked really well actually.

For the speedo, I found one of those speed radar things that the cops set up. You know, the ones that show your speed and flashed it its really high. I found one on a side street (don't know why it was there) and drove by so the sign read 25. Set the needle while rolling, and drove by again to make sure it was right. Had to redo it, but you get the point. That was probably the stupidest way to do it, but it works. Haven't had to redo it since. According to the logger it's off by 1 1/2 MPH.

[nova1313]

nice guide. With my glow gauge face's I put them ontop of the old ones, didn't even bother to remove the needles on the two bigger gauges just slid them over..

Put them in the general place and hit the corners with JB weld (I don't plan to remove them..) and then reassembled... Easy method for the lazy!