Thunderbird gauge needle swap - fail

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cbepro

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yeah so i bought a 2002 Thunderbird cluster and was gonna swap it out in my LS and take it to the dealer to recal everything but no....

i decided just to swap the turquoise needles over to my old LS cluster...i sanded the back of the LS overlays and put blue LEDs in. They are very very purple in person even though they look blue in the pic...it was kinda overkill so i put the regular bulbs back. Now it looks bland but i wanna try hyper white LEDs next.

yeah now my speedo and tach dont work...i was playing with the needles for 2 days tryin to get them straight but ima just put a new cluster in and have Ford recal everything back to normal.

i'll get more pics tomorrow

1012092300.jpg
 
Ouch... I would hate purple guages too lol.


White is what I want. So I am confused as to actually why you needed to remove the needles if you only replaced the lights?
 
i took just the needles from the Thunderbird gauge and put them on my LS gauge.

then i was thinking bout how ugly the stock green lights are so i got adventurous and took the LS overlay off to sand the green ish off. then put blue LEDs in.

So now my gauge cluster has the Thunderbird turqouise needles on the LS' s black overlay with stock normal bulbs. i'll take pics in the daytime.

it looks good in daytime, just wish my tach n speedo worked normally. Eh i had fun just seeing something diff than stock green
 
What happened when you put the cluster in your car?

Did anything work at all? Did you even try it?

I have an idea I am going to try with a Thunderbird cluster one of these days.

If only the Thunderbirds got the DIC like the V8 LS's did. That would make my job a TON easier.
 
when i put the cluster back in the tach and speedo is off. i think the fuel guage might be off too but i dont let it get 2 low anyway. the temp needle is so so slightly off but within range. The speedo says im going 6mph when im in park and wont go past 55mph. and the tach says im idleing @ 650-700 rpm then wont go past 4k when i gun it.

i also took the stock gauge overlay off to sand the green film on back and i never glued it back so it might b hittin the needle. but eh it was a learning experience. if i had a garage i'd do it till i got it right. i was foxn with the gauges for 2 days then i got pissed n left it the way it is.

This was my first needle swap job. This was my inspiration thread:

http://forums.nicoclub.com/zerothread/452934-how-to-swap-your-gauge-needles

i used a fork 2 get the needles off
 
I work with clusters ALL day long, so I know what to expect.

I was just wondering if you tried simply hooking the Tbird cluster up in your LS.
 
smdandb2 said:
If only the Thunderbirds got the DIC like the V8 LS's did. That would make my job a TON easier.
Click to expand...

I have wondered about doing this swap because I really wanted the silver overlay for the gauges. I've decided to go another route.

I really like the Cluster in the Tbird, and in the pictures I've seen it also has the DIC its just on the left side vs on the right in the LS.
 
Silver_LS said:
I have wondered about doing this swap because I really wanted the silver overlay for the gauges. I've decided to go another route.

I really like the Cluster in the Tbird, and in the pictures I've seen it also has the DIC its just on the left side vs on the right in the LS.
Click to expand...

It's not the same. It has the same DIC as a V6 LS.

I just need to get ahold of a cluster and I can try some things.
 
Oh okay, I didn't know that. There must have been a seriously lower number of T birds made, Ebay has a but load of LS clusters, but not one for a t bird. Guess they don't get crashed. I wonder if someone coud get one, if you could swap the DIC out and put the LS v8 one in. Is that what you want to try?
 
That cluster would look pretty sweet but the theme can't be carried through out the entire car, with everything lit green. Thats the only proplem I thought when thinking about the gauges. It'll be interesting to see where this goes. O, if you did have the insane determination and drive to do a full conversion of changing the color of all the buttons (door panel and console) be simply soldering in different color LEDs in place of the factory ones? Or are the buttons green color from a green tint to the back of the button?
 
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