I think I killed my dash clusters

[dkim097]

91 Subaru Legacy

 

Me and my friend thought it would be a good idea to try to install a celophane piece of blue paper to change the color of the LEDS by putting it behind the numbers and taping it on. Unfortunately when we reassembled it, a lot went to shit

1) The temp gauge doesnt work

2) The gas gauge doesnt work

Both their needles, the little metal part attached to the spacer and wires with the arrow, fell out. We tried to put it back in, didnt work. So we put super glue on it and popped it in and it didnt work lol.

 

is it possible to fix said needles/gauges?

 

 

3) Speedometer doesnt work. The number plate is a bit off place, causing the odometer and tripometer to not be able to move. That is an easy fix along with the speedometer I would think. When we tried to re-attach it bak to zero, I think we just twisted it a bit too far to the right. A bit of jimmying with it can send it back to 0.

 

HELP! I guess we were high on crack when we thought this would work (I'm joking.)

 

I just wanna know if the gauges are fixable or if I should scrap it and get to an autowrecker and find me an old cluster.

[Shogun506]

Oh man.. I did something quite similar to this when I had my first car, a 2004 Mustang back in the day. The difference is I installed different colour bulbs instead and placed a bit of metallic film behind the lights to improve brightness. Stupid kid I was I forgot that would screw up the circuitry and ended up probably shorting a bunch of shit. Anyway, long story short, I had to get a new gauge cluster. Be warned though that getting a new cluster won't solve your problems (at least it didn't in the mustang). I had to then take it to the dealer to install the new cluster because it wouldn't start with the new cluster and had to be programmed to work with the car ($$$). Funny story is that my car had 119k km on it and the new cluster had 73k km. When they installed it they didn't even change the mileage to match the car's actual mileage and it showed like if my car had 73k and counting.

 

My advice is go to a junkyard, grab a cluster and hope to hell it works in your car since you have an older model. Otherwise I don't know what your '91 gauge cluster looks like but it's probably not that difficult to figure out what's wrong with it and fix it. Last resort is an expensive dealer fix.