I hate ford green gauges! ..so I'm making new ones

[Nicoleb3x3]

I've wanted custom gauges for my stang...because I hate the ford green
and..I also hate white face gauges in a fox...they just don't look right since they're not sylish gauges to begin with. I like the black face, but hate the green at night...

I read online somewhere that you can scrape away the green on the back of the gauges...and then using special glass paint, can make any color you want...

so, I've been experimenting...at first I wanted red/purple..but the purple looked crappy, so I scraped it off.

at a second look...I like the white!
White is classy, bright, and easy to read.

so; here's a pic, what do you think? go with white? or red?
or maybe white with some red ticks?

btw; these are my old gauges I used for testing before doing it to my new 140 mph gauges.
...so if anyone wants these, I'll sell them cheeper than the gauges you find on ebay!

http://www.gotstang.com/0505/Nicoleb3x3/gauges008.jpg

http://www.gotstang.com/0505/Nicoleb3x3/gauges010.jpg

[dreamr]

Hmm I like Blue :devil:

Red would look good as well.

So did you actually scrape the paint off the front? I left the white paint on the front of the overlay although it was the source of the green. Painting red or blue behind it changed the color appropriately, but I am curious how you got the white. Without destroying daytime visibility.

What does it look like with the lights off?

[Nicoleb3x3]

hmm, well when I scrape down past the green layer, all that's left is the plastic part under it, which is the white you see in the day time just like the black face itself. The White daytime is actually plastic, the same as the black.

So, the daytime colors you cannot scrape away, I found that to be impossible, so once I figured that out, I could scrap away all the green and not worry about losing the white daytime. Also; daytime view you'll see the khm is green, so when you scrape the back of those, you're left with green plastic...so it can't be changed except for a lighter green. so; I blacked those out in back so they don't light up at night, I don't need khm at night, it's not important to me. (since I didn't want to tint them blue..that's why choose to blacken them, but I could have changed the color of them like you explained- but I want white which could not be done.) The daytime is the same.

long story short....You will end up with the same colors you have in the daytime after you scrape away everything. The daytime does not look changed whatsoever, sorry no pic- just take my word for it. :)

...maybe I'll post a pic in a few mins of the daytime

[Nicoleb3x3]

ok, I feel bad, so I took a pic for you!

http://www.gotstang.com/0505/Nicoleb3x3/gauges014.jpg

[dreamr]

Interesting when I did mine a month or two ago I found that the green color was actually under the white paint on the front. I tried scraping this and the black white all just came off . Luckily I only tried it on one of the intermediate lines. Perhaps I should play some more. But in the end I painted the back blue and left the green,they turned out a very deep turqoise which was perfect. Kinda weird though as I swear I couldn't remove the paint on the face without loosing the day time color. :hmmm:

Are you doing it all or just the speedo.

The rest is easier. The dash switches have a little plastic piece with the design on it. I just popped them out and painted the blue on back. Then re-attached with a small drop of black CA glue.

The heater panel is rather easy as well since the green color comes from a sticker which can be removed leaving the gauges clear.

The needles all you need to do is paint the small circular area to get the color, but I painted the whole back of the needle..

Now to get the speedo from lighting green there is a little piece of plastic that needs to be removed.

You can find the details by following this link to my post on the Explorer Forum

http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1458968&postcount=55

[Nicoleb3x3]

yeah!! i seen your thread, that's what gave me the courage to try it!!!
nice job! and thanks for testing it all out with great photo's!

but yes, on the back of the gauges there's white, then under that is green, but under that is plastic white layer that wouldn't scrape away...I was worried it would, but after scraping it clean...I seen exactly how it worked. (white plastic in front then green then white to backlight the green)

for the rest of the gauges, yes, I plan to finish but couldn't decide on a color...
I relaly like the crisp white, the photo's don't show it; but it looks very clean and classy. I was going to put led's for backlighting to eliminate the possibility of any yellow from the bulbs :)

[Nicoleb3x3]

I plan to do all of my interior lights, including the a/c stuff too

[dreamr]

Damn so I just needed to keep scraping huh.......I got scared though and tested with the blue. I liked it so never tried much harder to get the green off assuming it was on the front under the black and white paint...

Guess I was wrong.....thanks for clarifying for me.


The white would look good I think, but like you mentioned the bulbs will take away from that white color a bit, and that's a hell of a lot of LED's to wire in :nailbite:

Not that I am being much of a help, but I personally think the red with the white tics looks the best. White with red ticks would look good as well if you can get it to stay pure white.

[Nicoleb3x3]

they make led ultra light bulb size 194 that fits the stock sockets, and uses a low wattage, I'll try it out and see how it looks

I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to do this, maybe not until I come back from our road trip in August.

[mustangfreak123]

I might have to try this in my truck when I pull my gauges out. I'm getting tired of having to turn on the interior light at night to see how fast I am going because the gauges do not light up at all....

[Nicoleb3x3]

it's worth pulling the faces off, you may have blown bulbs too! there's I think 3 on each side, plus 4 or 5 in their own cubbie holes up the center for the other idiot lights