Gonna attempt to change the gauge/instrument cluster colors! - Honda Prelude Forum

Ludatic · 02-12-2002, 11:21 AM

I'm sure a lot of u have wanted to do this and were sick of that amber. I actually dont mind amber. Why? cuz if u look at the other hondas, everyother honda's dash is that nasty GREEN color. We're unique, we have amber. Its kind of like how japan has RED for the racing color u know? Well in america the prelude, civic SI (99-00), and s2000 have amber. But i was thinkin, why dindt they make red? (and i'm sure lotsa u want to change it to blue like the VW one).

Well i got indiglos but i got annoyed with em.. cuz they dont match my AC controls, and sometimes it messes with my needles cuz its so thick.. So i recently went to Joanns and bouht some transparent red paper.. (i coundlt find blue! but i figure red's like the JDM racing color... the new RSX has red it looks nice). And so today imma take apart my gauges and try to shove some red transparencies behind it. I'll post picture if it turns out well! Wish me luck!

Justwakin · 02-12-2002, 11:26 AM

good luck!!!

pIOUs · 02-12-2002, 01:12 PM

I'm curious how that will turn out for you. I went to an art supply store and bought 2 sheets of professional color gels. It's that translucent color film they put in front of flood lights to change their color. What I don't like about the stock gauges is that they diffuse the numbers from behind with black dot matrix paint. I did try to scratch that stuff off but it's layered on there pretty good and I was afraid of dissolving the white paint that's on there.
Look through My photo album (Link). It has some pictures that may help you.
My guess is that it will be verydark with blue, but with red it may be OK. Just keep in mind that the bulbs aren't putting out a true white light, and the orange comes through by darkening that color. Red and yellow make orange, so what you get may be a darker orange and not a true red. You could always go with LEDs, but I think you could learn some valuable info from your project. I haven't done enough experimenting with color gels yet. BTW my 25x40 inch sheets were 5.95US. Good luck, and let us know what you find.

Edit: Oh yeah, once you have the pod out, get some allegator click from radio shack ($5) and some lanttern batteries (or some 12v source or 6v in series) and test the lighting while it's out of your car. Trust me. experimenting this way is the only way to go so you don't have to keep going out to the car at night to see how it looks. My photo's show where to power up the backlighting.