My new gauges

They look great. I just bought some LED indicators from princess auto yesterday (12 volt, $2 bucks each) to modify my cluster and I thought I'd put them in the tach. Good to see that's possible.

Jay
 
I dont have a speedo... but i want to figure out how to have a lightbulb that lights up when i hit 100
 
I dis -assembled the gauges (Suzuki t500) which was really easy. Popped of the needle and removed the face plate. I measured everything with a micrometer and protractor then duplicated it all on a CAD program. I found out the marks are not all an even distance apart (which may account for '70's era vaugness of the gauges) but I I just duplicated the original spacing anyway. At this point I was going to have them vinyl cut (Callie at Calliegraphics.com said she could cut them), but I went cheap for now as an experiment. I printed mine out on glossy photo paper set at best quality then I laminated them then carefully cut them out. Even if they don't hold up they are cheap and easy to replace As for the needles, I stripped the paint of them (chemical stripper worked best and only took as few minutes) then polished them with a small dremel polishing wheel. A final polish by hand and paint the tip red. I made the red the same length as the red on my gauge. It was even easy to change the odometer ( I know - illegal) to the mileage that I've done on the bike since I restored it ( it was an old gauge from another bike anyway as the bike came without one). I sealed the back up when I re assembled them with clear silicon. So far they seem to be doing fine.
 
Steve Zodiak said:
I dis -assembled the gauges (Suzuki t500) which was really easy. Popped of the needle and removed the face plate. I measured everything with a micrometer and protractor then duplicated it all on a CAD program. I found out the marks are not all an even distance apart (which may account for '70's era vaugness of the gauges) but I I just duplicated the original spacing anyway. At this point I was going to have them vinyl cut (Callie at Calliegraphics.com said she could cut them), but I went cheap for now as an experiment. I printed mine out on glossy photo paper set at best quality then I laminated them then carefully cut them out. Even if they don't hold up they are cheap and easy to replace As for the needles, I stripped the paint of them (chemical stripper worked best and only took as few minutes) then polished them with a small dremel polishing wheel. A final polish by hand and paint the tip red. I made the red the same length as the red on my gauge. It was even easy to change the odometer ( I know - illegal) to the mileage that I've done on the bike since I restored it ( it was an old gauge from another bike anyway as the bike came without one). I sealed the back up when I re assembled them with clear silicon. So far they seem to be doing fine.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I was thinking about getting one of the inkjet printer bumper-sticker kits from the office supply store and printing on that. Anyone tried that with success?

CC
 
Forgot to mention I glued the prints to the faceplate using 3m77 spray adhesive.

CC - I haven't seen one of those kits. It'll be interersting to see how that goes.

Andrew -welcome to the club ;)
 
Those are some sweet faceplates, bro! I have started on a set, but haven't comleted them yet. Was gonna print mine on a CD label, but that photo paper idea sounds great.
 
Haven't tried it yet but Krylon makes spray paint in UV clear. Supposedly works on paper. I'm giving my gauges a facelift using high gloss photopaper and then covering with a clear UV protected film. At my last job we had a vinyl printer/cutter. I would have made it out of that.

Jay
 
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