How-to: Convert 94-96 green EL gauge cluster and gas/temp gauges to blue - Honda Prelude Forum

Phamine · 01-11-2005, 03:12 PM

There are several posts concerning changing the electroluminescent from green to blue.
Damn you guys and your easy-to-do gauge cluster
blue EL gauge

But there isn't a in depth write up. Hope this helps.

Materials:
â€¢ Philips screwdriver
â€¢ Scissors/cutting blade
â€¢ Pen/ Pencil
â€¢ Acetate glue or tape
â€¢ Blue Acetate

1. Remove tweeter trim, lower trim and upper trim.
2. Remove gas/temp protective cover held by 2 screws - one on upper middle and one to the left. Also remove the seperator trim. Be careful to disconnect the clock harness during removal.
3. Remove gas/temp gauges held by 4 screws; 2 on each side. Disconnect harnesses.
4. Remove gauge cluster which is also held by 4 screws; 2 on each side. Disconnect harnesses.

Gas/Temp:

5. Remove the rear cover to get access to the lenses.
6. Remove the gas/temp circuit board
7. Either remove the lense or leave it as is. Cut several layers of acetate and place the acetate on the lense. Use tape or acetate glue to hold the film down. Usually 3-6 layers of film will achieve a bluish color. The amount of layers of acetate depends on your taste.

8. Do the same for the clock which is the 3rd circuit board on the right.
9. Reseal - test for color - add/remove acetate - reinstall.

Gauge Cluster:

10. Remove trip button carefully by pulling it towards you.
11. Remove the screws behind the cluster
12. Next pry off the the cover via tabs here and here. Be sure to carefully disconnect the harness from the cover and the cluster. Remove cover and set aside.

With the cover removed, you now have access to the gauge faces.

13. There are 4 screws holding the face on. Remove the screws located around the needles.
14. Carefully slide the face off the cluster

15. Trace the faces outline on a sheet of acetate.

16. Resketch outline to ease installation as well as to remove blue film from covering up redline. Now use this as a mold and sketch out 3-5 more copies of blue acetate.
17. Start placing acetate to the back of the face.. Again use either acetate glue or tape to hold down the layers of acetate to the back of the face.

18. Reseat the face and reinstall the cover. Next remove the odometer and place in some film.
19. Reseal - test for color - add/remove acetate - reinstall.

â€¢ How many films did I personally used?
Gas/temp and clock - 5
Odometer - 5
Gauge Cluster - 3

Finished prioduct:

The pictures are off color. They are actually more blue than is shown. it took me a total of 4 hr's to do the mod.

kansludeman · 01-11-2005, 03:41 PM

holy faq this batman! hehe, nice write up! cheap and good lookin' mod if done right.

UWNTSUM · 01-11-2005, 06:29 PM

great write up... the hardest part was not messing up the needles, if so ur **** out of luck... only prob with this mod tho, its daym near impossible to see anything in the day time when the sun is all up on ur dash.

Bertico78 · 01-11-2005, 11:24 PM

very nice write-up this should be FAQ'd

btw- i've discovered if you use pink acetate instead of blue, it will filter out all the green and your EL gauges will end up bright white instead of blue, much like the new accord and tsx gauges..

PRelude787 · 01-11-2005, 11:46 PM

^^I concur.....FAQ this plz!

Bertico.....do you have any pics of the gauges using the pink acetate?

Bertico78 · 01-12-2005, 02:23 PM

this is from an older thread back a while ago, alternated blue and white.
I've now removed the blue to make it all white, but i don't have a pic....

Ludatic · 01-12-2005, 02:29 PM

funny how PINK gives you white, l'awesome

Ludatic · 01-12-2005, 02:31 PM

Phamine, shave the LEDs in your climate on the bottom row (for the temperature and fan speed) and they won't be as spotty

Phamine · 01-12-2005, 03:44 PM

^^ Yeah - I had a 92-93 climate control face on before. They were just circles rather than bars on the fan speed control

LUDE'Z · 01-12-2005, 04:26 PM

That looks so clean

EL Gauges>indiglo gauges

munscher · 01-12-2005, 05:19 PM

Yeah, sometimes its difficult to get the lighting right to be able to show the true color... here's a shot i managed to take one day of mine.

4thGenReady2Go · 01-19-2005, 12:05 AM

Phamine: wonderfully done. Humberto, how easy/difficult was it to shave the blue off the back of the speedo?

Bertico78 · 01-19-2005, 10:07 AM

you don't shave anything. Pink acetate will FILTER out the blue/green color waves and leave a nice white instead. i used two layers of the light pink variety.

munscher · 01-19-2005, 10:24 AM

you CAN shave the blue coloring off the back though and it actually results in a brighter blue than if left there.

4thGenReady2Go · 01-19-2005, 06:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by munscher

you CAN shave the blue coloring off the back though and it actually results in a brighter blue than if left there.

That's assuming blue acetate is used after shaving it off. I just wanted to know how easy it was to scrape it off, and once it's off, if it was colored at all. I'm leaning away from blue, and more to something like red, but I'm not sure yet.

LUDE'Z · 01-19-2005, 06:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by munscher

Yeah, sometimes its difficult to get the lighting right to be able to show the true color... here's a shot i managed to take one day of mine.

Wow bro' that looks amazing. I would give you some mad cash if you could do that to mine. I tried to hit you up on AIM but i got no response.
Later

munscher · 01-19-2005, 10:23 PM

my bad man, i saw the msg but you were gone...

its not terribly difficult. you see from this thread how easy the speedo/tach and gas/temp gauges are. The climate control just involves soldering some LEDs and resistors. The price of the LEDs can add up though. I think i spent somewhere around 40 or 50 bucks on just the climate control b/c of having to order LEDs in minimum quantities.

oh, and the keyring just involves an LED as well.

mr. r00t · 01-21-2005, 12:08 PM

I did this acetate thing about a year ago, and it does look better than that indiglo crap, other than the fact that the EL gauges are blurry and impossible to see during the day. Anyone curious about this mod please keep this 2 points in mind.

Bertico78 · 01-21-2005, 03:39 PM

I don't have that problem. they can be easily seen in the daytime, even when bright sunlight hits the dash.
one thing that helps is sanding away the white paint on the two plastic platesthat lay behind the gauge face.

L-U-R-C-H · 01-23-2005, 09:47 AM

So if we're wanting to change our dash to the blue color what's the best color of film to use considering the sunlight?