| speeder |
06-13-2024 02:35 PM |
Restoring Instrument clusters:
I’ve been taking apart clusters and cleaning them up for a long time but my game recently got elevated with some proper fluorescent orange needle paint. :)
Mercedes-Benz and some other European manufacturers used VDO gauges back in the day with orange needles. It was a safety feature, they are easier to see day or night and therefore less time to glance at them and away from the road. All good except they did not account for UV damage, at all. In sunny parts of the world, like the SW USA, the needles fade sometimes completely back to dull beige, which is invisible at night with old lighting fixtures, (at least to my old eyes).
I used to have gauges rebuilt by North Hollywood Speedometer and they would paint the needles. Another guy I used, (an absolute craftsman), gave me a small bottle of the orange paint once but I never used it and it dried up. So off to eBay I went!
Several sellers, so I picked a random one and ordered some paint. When I tried it out the first time, I thought it was no good because it’s watery and thin. But it’s actually perfect…in my research long ago, I read about guys on forums who had painted needles and ruined their gauges because the paint added too much weight to sometimes delicate precision instruments. The thin, watery stuff I have is the perfect viscosity and two thin coats works great. All gauges work as designed!
Lately, it’s been just old MB clusters because that’s what I have around but I’ve done others. I carefully take them apart, clean the faces of the gauges, (this is a sensitive part of the job), wash the plastic carrier and clean up the clear plastic with professional products. I then paint the needles, let them dry and put it all back together. I’m pretty OCD, so I even clean the bulbs and of course replace any bad ones.
I don’t have a lot of “before pictures” but here is one I just finished:
EDIT: I can’t seem to post photos from my phone for some reason. I’ll post some when I get home. 🏠
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