KuHL 951

Dan,
I haven't done anything to the Turbo yet but this is the plan.

I'll be installing white gauge faces with a bulb upgrade. My car is black, interior mostly black, and PO put limo dark tint on hatch and quarters. It is too dark for my taste and I feel the white faces will help brighten up the dash a bit. The lights are now too dim and I really don't want to do an Indiglo thing; too Uncle Ben's for me. I talked to someone that said their white faces were bright enough at night with stock lights to have to actually turn the dimmer down; that would be a change if true. I also feel the white will look good from what I've seen on other cars. The new faces are a reflective 3M material over aluminum with designed to allow the rear lighting for warning lights to show through. I will go ahead and install the Sylvania 194 bulbs (3.8 W) at the same time just for good measure. The LED route doesn't seem to offer me anything but pretty colors so I'm not planning on that. I haven't been into the 86 cluster yet but it looks a lot easier than the 83 dash with the old VDO's and speedo cable. I might change my mind if I get in there and it doesn't look like the changes are easily reversible. Time will tell if it is a good decision or not. Wish I had more time, I've got quite a few new parts but no time to put them on.

Dan in Pasadena

I can relate to the lack of time.

My Dodge Ram 4x4 has white gauge faces so I don't think I will put them into my 944. I'll be happy if the get a full measure of brightness from the stock lights too. Good luck with your upgrade and if you can, post the Before and After. -de

z3bra

Just take your time and do it like I said and you won't be complaining about your gauges being hard to see. Mine are looking at least as good as I remember them being from my old N/A and I never recall them seeming too dim on that car. Granted it was 10 years ago but that was one of my biggest interior related peeves on the current car from day one. The fact that it was practically free to fix it made it much nicer.

2Tight, once you get the cluster out it is pretty easy to get to everything, just separate the front and back halfves and putting faces on the gauges should be really easy. The only thing else you'll have to do after taking of the lens is take all the needles off carefully, The gauge faces are completely accessible with that lens and front half removed. The bulbs themselves are in little plastic holders that are just a quarter turn fastener and then they pull right out. Even if you change them out for something it's pretty easy to test it by putting the cluster back in the car without the trim/vent piece and see if you like the brightness. Also you don't have to take off the lens to swap the bulbs so it's just a matter of taking out the cluster and looking at the back of it and you're set.

I'm considering the red because I just like red gauge lighting. My parents used to have an Audi 5000 with red gauge lights about 20 years ago and I liked it long before it was ricey. If I could do something like my wife's '03 Passat with the cool cobalt blue backlight and not have it cost a fortune I might consider that but red's fine for me. Technically it's the best lighting color anyway, ask any astronomer and they'll tell you that red light is the best choice for not screwing up your night vision when you're trying to be able to see in the dark.

KuHL 951

So what happens at night to red needles with red light? If I thought I could have white faces during the day that were red(reddish) at night I might go for it. I have red leather inserts on black seats, red shift boot, red/black Momo wheel, even a red Blaupunkt Honolulu radio. I thought of red gauge faces but was concerned how they would look at night. I'd love to be able to experiment with all the options.

SeattleS2

Okay... I've seen plenty of the dash bezels on Ebay, but alas, I just did a search to copy in a picture or give a link of them and found none. Keep checking though... you will see them again assuredly. They are actually pretty classy looking IMHO.

Here's my question... So, the clear plastic cover over the instrument cluster can be seperated from the cluster itself by a few screws... that's it??? If so, GREAT! So, does this mean Porsche sells the clear cover as a seperate part???

I hope so... mine has some scratching. Plastic polish might get them out, but it would take WAY more of my time than I'm willing to spend. I'd rather just buy a replacement if I can.

My plan is to send my steering wheel to AGLA to get recovered, replace the windshield and replace the dash... and then at that time, also replace the clear plastic shroud over the guages if possible. I also need to source a good used dash/vent surround piece and a perfect used blue/linen 968 dash (which is like, next to impossible to find from what I hear). So, the dash is basically what's holding me up.

But, I want to start stockpiling parts now.

Any info appreciated.

944_S_TYPE

Hey, If your dash lights ard dim your reflectors may be in poor shape.
See attached, Sourced from 944online.com

944_S_TYPE

And this is a good reflector Assy.

z3bra

Mine definitely looked like the first pic that 944_S_TYPE posted. They're more like the second one with the metal tape now though.

2tight, I just want red lights, not gauge faces. I'm pretty much a black or white only guy when it comes to gauge faces. I think the needles are more of a fluorescent orange than red so even with red projected light they should be easy to see against the black background which is still going to be black since it's not very reflective. Just the white numbers and lines will be reddish now too instead of white. Get some red celophane and shine a flashlight through it onto the gauges to see what it looks like easily. I'm sure you could try any other color for that matter.

SeattleS2, the lens is glued to a black plastic piece with holes in it for the gauges to show through which is technically a bezel I guess. The small step you see around the outside of the 4 gauges is the piece that's glued to the clear lens. You might be able to get the clear separated from the black piece without breaking it but I really doubt it I wouldn't do it without a replacement around at the very least. By the look of it, it looks like the whole cluster is made by VDO which is probably why you can't buy just the front half or lens from Porsche.

Dan in Pasadena

SeattleS2 - Polishing your clear lenses is super easy if you have a bench grinder. I bought the buffing wheel and compound from Harbor Feight - you know what that is? Cheapo tools is what. Look them up online. Their quality was very adequate for this purpose. Buy the "loosest" wheel. The one with a single line of stitching in it...once you see the picture or real thing you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. The compound is named "Plastic". If you have access to one of their stores...or probably any hardware store...there is a guide to which wheel and which compound to use depending on what you're trying to polish printed on the bac kof the various wheel packages.

My turn signal lenses took like 1-2 minutes tops. They came out as shiny and un-pitted as new ones. Good luck, Dan

SeattleS2

Dan,

Of course I know Harbor Frieght! I'm all about cheap tools!

I know polishing side market lenses and the sort would probably be a cake... And, I'll probably do that... thanks for the suggestion. But, polishing the clear plastic over the guage cluster on a bench grinder????

I think NOT!

This is a part I'd rather not &$*$ with! I just want to replace. So, if you cannot seperate this piece from the rest of the cluster seperately, what the hell were you guys talking about????

Maybe I'm not following the thread correctly or something, but I thought your instructions were to do exactly that. I guess I was wrong.

Why are Audi/Mercedes/Porsche so evil as not to make parts like this easlily removable and replacement parts readily available. It's like they want to make parts unavailable and overpriced so our cars will look crappy and convince us to give in and buy a new Boxter. WELL IT'S NOT GOING TO WORK WITH ME PORSCHE!

So, you are saying the clear plastic cover over the guages is NOT available as a seperate part from Porsche??? This part that always gets scratched and damaged?

This seems all too unfair, but all too familiar.

Zero10

Holy crap, this took me 30 minutes to read, and I didnt' read it all.

I hope I answer all the questions, it's too hard to find them all =)

First off, I apologize for not reading this thread again sooner. I've been in a real rush due to final exams at the university. Finally got a day to myself, so I'm back on Rennlist =)

Okie dokie. The LED kits were out-of-production for a couple weeks while I couldn't get any good LED's, but that shortage is over, and I will be making LED's again. I just got a whole bag of bulb holders from Porschapart, so it's all good to go.

They are not just a higher wattage bulb or something like that. As was already stated, that will have adverse effects on the instrument cluster itself. Like I said, I just got a whole bag of bulb holders. Any of them with a 3 or 4 watt bulb in them are severely yellowed. I can't imagine what the instrument clusters themselves looked like, but I don't think it's good.

If you use a buffing wheel, you can polish plastic to a very nice shine on a bench grinder. Done it a few times at school.

Ok, so back to the LED's.
Just incase you guys don't know, the kits consist of 3 bulbs holders, 3 resistors, 6 LED's, 2 LED's and 1 resistor mounted in each bulb holder. They look a little funny, but I guarantee they work quite well. I think I mentioned that they were $45 US a set. They are available in white, blue, amber and red.
I am going to try to insert some pictures of them here, I hope it works.

Here are the blue ones


These are the amber's, they are a very close match to the rest of the dashboard lighting.


Here are the whites. The LED's weren't quite properly aimed when this picture was taken. I attempted to re-take a picture of them properly aimed, but I couldn't get the white balance right, and they looked terrible. So this is the best picture I have.


And finally, the red set. They look quite evil.

Hope these pictures shed some light on my LED upgrade....
Sometimes I crack myself up.

I apologize for the poor quality of the pictures. My camera has some issues focusing properly in a dim light situation, when I'm taking a picture of a light.

Anyhoo... If anybody has some more questions, feel free to ask me! =)

j_overly

The "gauge rings" will go through the back of the bezel once you separate the cluster from the front bezel (large screws on back of cluster edge on back). They go through the large hole. The large ring is the only difficult one. It will flex enough to fit through the hole.

I bought a set from a german company selling them on ebay (couldn't even read the invoice). I am now "Excellente Abwicklung, 1A eBayer, www.armaturenringe.de sagt Dankesch¿n !!!" which probably means gullable american. This is off their site:



They will have you secure them with super-glue so they don't move around. Make sure you let them dry overnight with the open holes facing up or you will have a nasty white haze on the inside of your clear cover.

Dan in Pasadena

I tried going to that link and I don't have the slightest eff'ing idea what it said. If I email them in English do you suppose someone there would understand it and tell me in English what they cost and where to send the money?

By the way, from what little I can tell from that picture, the rings look great and are a classy small improvment to our cars. I'm surprised more guys haven't done this!

Zero10 - This was my post originally, I didn't get whether you said the kit is a plug 'n play, or is there some DIY soldering/assembly to do? How difficult, how much time is required? Please explain, I might be interested depending on whether I can get this German company to talk to me. Thanks, Dan

Zero10

Oh sure, sometimes I don't understand properly =)
My kit is completely plug and play. No modifications required. I don't have pictures of the bulbs themselves at the moment, I'm on the wrong side of the city (at the G/F's house), but they are a drop-in replacement for the factory bulbs. Only tricky part is making sure they face down, lol.
Not complicated at all. The hardest part is taking the instrument cluster out. Switching the bulbs takes about 2 minutes. =)

This german company? Somebody else makes these kits? I am really interested to see how they do it. Could you maybe elaborate on that?
Or perhaps I misunderstood.

Scuba Steve

*gets out English - German dictionary*

Ich versuche.