I see BLUE!!!!

I've been busy converting all of my blue/white aux displays over to amber with overlays & stuff, oposite of what your trying to do...:tongue:

I haven't looked too hard at what your talking about cause I was staying amber, but I do have to take 2 of my clusters apart to swap a few parts around so I can send one to gchris... haven't had a chance to play with it yet but I'll look at it harder when I do, maybe this weekend, but I've said that already for quite a few weeks already too so... maybe...
 
cool. any help would be appreciated turbo!!

i'm sure you know what we're talking about since these are your pics, but, here is the link:

///72334&postcount=175

the 4th and 5th pics. mainly the plastic piece in the 5th picture: back of the gauge is where the problem lies. i'm guessing i could combine both clusters, but, damn......i really love these newer gauges.
 
yeah, from what it looks like & from what I remember, it looks like the clear plastic is coated/painted/printed on one side, & the amber may have been the last layer or the first, depends... but it is not on the back, it is on the face...

tricky... would be very challenging to try & scrape clean just the areas that need to illuminate....

has anyone tried a blue led behind this anyway to see what the effect is, maybe the blue will shine through & not be too affected by this???
 
i only have white for this....... i might pick up a couple blue to see. i won't be able to get it the way i originally wanted, but,...... oh well.
 
Oke guys i've got news. I was kinda bummed by this new findings and took my cluster home last evening to see for myself.

It seems that the top layer is coated or painted on the plastic piece with the amber being put on first.
I went to my "Sticker"guy this morning and talked it true with him surching for a solution. Thing is that it is very hard to relocate all numbers and Rev & Speed-stripes after you pealed it all of. Also due to the shape of the plastic it is hard to put new on wich also is transparant at some points and not on other.

I had 2 ideas in mind:

1) try to mirror all number on the back with stickers first so you know where they are. Take of the front. After that put new stickers on the front.......paint the whole deal and peel off the stickers. This is extreem precise work wich i aren't to sure of myself if it's duable.

2) try to get all the details in schematic and cut foil and put that on the plastic and peel out all the details such as: Rev / Speed / Nr's / Miles / etc....
Again the shape of the plastic makes this difficult because it's rounded at some points and will strech the pre-cut numbers such so the won't be straight anymore. That what my sticker guy was affraid of.

FINNALLY he came with the easiast solution......putting BLUE foil on the back of the plastic wich is already flat. You still have the orange off course. But the foil he put on was quit bright and when putting it against some light it looks nice, but haven't tested it yet so keep you guys up-to-date

Here are some pics:
 
raymond said:
Don't know wich instal you mean but there isn't much difference in the cluster so not very exciting pics i gues.

Do have some pics of my dash finnaly when all was finished:
Click to expand...

Amazing job Ray. It looks great.


PS: Can you make a separate thread about your RS4 seat swap with some pics!!??
 
i'm trying to contact cal. kan. to see if i could possibly obtain a set of gauges before they're pressed. no luck so far, though.

the only contact information that i could find lead me to TN and they don't make the instrument cluster there, so, dead end. i did just find a general inquiry email to send questions to... so now, i play the waiting game.

it looks like i could probably take a heat gun to these to get them apart, but, i'm not 100% sure and i don't want to destroy the brand new cluster on an experiment.
 
chiFX45 said:
it looks like i could probably take a heat gun to these to get them apart, but, i'm not 100% sure and i don't want to destroy the brand new cluster on an experiment.
Click to expand...

Can be done i gues but i'm affraid of doing so as it is very hard to preciously put all the numbers back after removing them and then then all is off.
 
raymond said:
Can be done i gues but i'm affraid of doing so as it is very hard to preciously put all the numbers back after removing them and then then all is off.
Click to expand...


on the 06-08 cluster there's 2 pieces glued/plastic welded together. one seems like it's just a "light pipe" sort of plastic piece and the other is the gauge face. on the back of that face there is the amber film. so to remove that, you have to get them apart and sand. putting them back together afterwards should actually be the easy part of the whole thing.

i finally did hear from the calsonic kansei rep that i emailed and got this back for contact info:

R&D Center, Headquarters
2-1917 Nisshin-cho, Kita-ku, Saitama-city, Saitama
TEL.048-660-2111
Zip.331-8501

i'm gonna find out international calling charges maybe and give them a call or maybe just send a letter and give my email address for a response. either way i have to hope someone there speaks english - at least enough to understand what i'm asking for. IT'S A START!:biggrin:
 
Hi Gang,

I am converting my 04 US cluster to an 07 KM cluster. Can anyone give me some pointers on removing the old cluster? Also, based on this thread, I know I am going to have to add 12v to one of the cables. Where would be the best place to tap into the 12v?

Thanks
 
no response from cal-kan........ this is getting pretty frustrating to say the least. every LED has been swapped out at this point in the FX. the only thing holding me up from being completely done is the gauge faces. i'm about to just say screw it and switch everything back to oem amber. =/
 
chiFX45 said:
no response from cal-kan........ this is getting pretty frustrating to say the least. every LED has been swapped out at this point in the FX. the only thing holding me up from being completely done is the gauge faces. i'm about to just say screw it and switch everything back to oem amber. =/
Click to expand...

Hang in there buddy.....i'm picking this up again as we speak ( post).....can you tell me what color the leds are of the cluster.....are they orange /amber as well or just white as the cauge are done with the orange film. So i thought maybe only the blue film i did was enough.

Don't have a schematic of the +06 cluster so don't know were to give it the juice so i can see for myself. And didn't adjust the wiring yet in my car so i can connect it to my wiring and see.

Lett's make this happen buddy...:tup:
 
they're amber. mine are converted to white. what i'm attempting to do was to sand off the amber film and then cover the numbers in a blue film (lighting gel) that i have that matches my hvac/radio/nav controls. that way all of the hash marks for the speed, gas, temp, and rpm would be white while the letters and other accenting things in there would be blue.
 
chiFX45 said:
they're amber. mine are converted to white. what i'm attempting to do was to sand off the amber film and then cover the numbers in a blue film (lighting gel) that i have that matches my hvac/radio/nav controls. that way all of the hash marks for the speed, gas, temp, and rpm would be white while the letters and other accenting things in there would be blue.
Click to expand...


Sounds good but doable do you think...?? As those numbers on the plates seem to be very thight in there and are still orange also.
I was thinking how to "Two-Tone" the cluster as well......put haven't come up with an idea as on the old cluster all these colors would run true eachother.

So the leds are orange then....my plan is to at one side put white on the board and other side blue. Then put the blue film on the cauges and see wich comes out the best. If the white led don't shine hard enough true the film the color might not be strong enough.....therefore the blue to see if that brings something.

Keep in touch....hope to pick this up next week. :glasses:
 
i found this a looooooooong time ago. i was doing some research for lighting gels after i figured out what i wanted to do and actually came across this thread and read it. he had the same idea and i'm glad that he beat me to it because i didn't know how it would look. after i saw his pics, i bought everything that i needed lol. only hold up now is do this with my 03-05 cluster and hack in some lighting for it, or go with the 06-08 and REALLY be happy if i get it done.

actually, this is what helped me determine what color to pick out for the gauge faces.

http://g35driver.com/forums/lighting/145961-custom-guage-cluster-finally-done.html
 
chiFX45 said:
i found this a looooooooong time ago. i was doing some research for lighting gels after i figured out what i wanted to do and actually came across this thread and read it. he had the same idea and i'm glad that he beat me to it because i didn't know how it would look. after i saw his pics, i bought everything that i needed lol. only hold up now is do this with my 03-05 cluster and hack in some lighting for it, or go with the 06-08 and REALLY be happy if i get it done.

actually, this is what helped me determine what color to pick out for the gauge faces.

http://g35driver.com/forums/lighting/145961-custom-guage-cluster-finally-done.html
Click to expand...

Looks good...!! Haven't read the whole topic....has his cluster also those plastic cauges and did he use that material on the above or underneath the cauges....
 
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