Refurbish a guage cluster

The first thing I decided to restore was the gauge cluster. Although I have absolutely no need for it anytime soon it is something I can work on quietly at night without disturbing the rest of the family. The primary issue was looks since as far as I know the gauges work. The wiring harness and actual gauges remained in place. The process was pretty straight forward but I did make a few modifications. I considered swapping to autometer gauges which I am sure would look good and work better than stock but that would have cost about $900 more.

About a dozen screws on the back hold the bezel to the metal frame which should be removed for servicing. This would be a good time to replace any dead bulbs as well. You will see the blue cups that help to give the green color at night (yellow bulb + blue lense =green light). After 40+ years these can crack so check them for replacement. If you want to be super cool you can buy colored LED bulbs that replace the stock bulbs so you can change the color to anything you want. You can get those from www.mustangproject.com. I am OK with the green so I left it stock. With the bezel off you have access to the lenses which are likely in rough shape like mine. The small center gauge was a blank plate on mine which was a space reserved for an optional clock. This was a very rare option so most people will find it with a blank plate like mine. I used this empty slot to add a tach since I plan to change the transmission to manual. The tach is a direct bolt in made by RetroTach and is available in 6000 or 8000 RPM with white or black face. I bought mine in the 8k white face. I added the white face overlay to all the gauges made by Scott Drake to modernize the look. I found the Scott Drake overlay to be of very high quality and easy to apply, although it wasn’t cheap. Just be careful of the very fragile needles as you apply to overlay. Next I masked off under the needles using a piece of paper and VERY carefully re-painted them florescent orange. They had all faded some and this helped brighten them up and give a fresh look. . It might seem like a silly detail but I think it helped and makes the whole thing look more professional. I used a small jar of paint meant for model building found at my local hobby shop. I changed the front bezel since what I had was beyond repair and the repro is very nice. My last little snag was the wiper switch which is chrome. It was not looking very good and had moderate pitting. A little steel wool cleaned most of this up and it looks great. Finally screw the new bezel back into place making sure to transfer all the plastic light buckets. The last thing I did was roll back the odometer to zero which I will show how to do in a separate section. Why would I do this and isn’t it illegal? I did it because the actual mileage on the car is unknown as stated on the title, and because I prefer to have the odometer show zero after a complete rebuild. It is not illegal if the title shows that the actual mileage is unknown. This is however HIGHLY illegal if you represent a specific mileage on the title or in any way represent a specific mileage to a buyer. Since the odometer only represents 5 digits it can only go to 99,999 miles before it rolls over to zero on its own. My car showed 86,000 miles and no one knew if this was 86,000, 186,000, or 286,000 miles which is a common issue on these old cars. So long as you never misrepresent what you have there is nothing illegal about changing the odometer.

This is the old bezel and the finished product. I didn't take any progress photos since it is very straight forward. The only trick is to make sure you take ALL the light buckets and transfer them over.

Its hard to get a good picture with the lens and chrome wanting to reflect the light. But here is a close up of the finished product. Very nice!!