Nurse, prep the patient. ~-inside your cluster-~ LOTS of BIG pics Only for the insane.

[furiousgeorge]

Someone asked earier tonight if there was a way to change the backlighting on the TT cluster, I figured I'd tear down my extra, and document it, so others don't have to tear into a potentially good cluster, and make my mistakes.

Here we go! Start with your patient, and your tools. T-10 and T-25 drivers, and a flat screwdriver.


On the back, you'll see 2 screws holding the fake leather cover for the steering column. (T-25) remove them, but put a hand on the spring passing thru the pleather piece. I sent the first screw bouncing off multiple walls before it finally hit the ground because of the spring force.

You'll have this when its off. MAKE SURE you pay attention to how it came, it never seems to sit right when you go to put it back on unless its perfect.

Remove the remaining 4 T-10 screws, and gently pry the clips back on either side of the cluster. Do one just enough so the clip is disengaged, then do the other. Lift the back off the cluster STRAIGHT UP until you're clear of the face. You really don't want to be bouncing the needles off anything, this isn't a cheap part.


With any luck, yours looks like this. Except your speedo will actually point to 0 (you think i would experiment on a good cluster!?)

Heres the tricky part. To get full access to the back of the cluster, or to do anything to the gauge faces, you'll need to pull the needles. Temp and Fuel come off easy. HOW TO PUT THE NEEDLES BACK IN THE SAME PLACE I'M NOT SURE. Please don't screw up your cluster! Mark it somehow! You'll notice they flop around pretty easy, keep that in mind when you yank them off.
Tach and Speedo are a different story. They'll come off much harder, and you need to be careful where you pry from. Again, since this is a junk cluster, I just used the screwdriver, sliding it under the edge, and twisting to save time. It'll work, but you MIGHT mark up the gauge face. If you can find or make a mini prybar, that would probably work best. Depending on what you're trying to do, you might be able to just manually move the needle, and pry the gauge face up from the edge, w/o removing the speedo and tach needle. Assess the situation, and see what works best for you.


Pry from under the needle, the gray part covering the needle is not stiff, and is only held on by 2 small plastic rivits. As you can see, I broke one, by not prying on the side of the needle. It'll glue back together well enough.



Back side of gauge face. WTF is that one light just below the 0 on the speedo?!


Inside of cluster

See those little white square things in all the recesses? Those be your lights. I guess you could make a filter plate from some thin colored plastic. If anyone actually does, send me some pics, that would be cool to see.

Sorry, this one's blurry.


Reverse operations to put it together, again, be real sure you don't hit the needles on anything when you're sliding the front and back of the cluster together.

Pics or Q's to mlorence AT gmail DOT com

[ToplessQuattro]

not printing these pictures. So all it does is slow download and take up a huge amount of screen space. Reduce res to as low as 640k or slightly larger and the online pictures will still look great.

[furiousgeorge]

But give me a break, its my first real contribution to the forum!

[ToplessQuattro]

friendliness of the site. By the way I think I saw a flea crap on the cluster...lol J/K

[furiousgeorge]

[maaliish]

[TTear]

Instead of switching the bulbs / chips, can't you just alter the digits' color by painting them or something else etc?

[crankTT]