Will these needles work in my truck do you think?

http://www.newtruckstuff.com/shop/pr...cat=255&page=1

 

You guys have really even "flows of light" but I want it to be absolutely perfect light distribution. Foil tape helps alot (see my earlier pics) I played with the LED placement for hours and I was so excited on the results that I got with this design. The bulbs I am using are on superbrightleds.com, they are 360 degree 5mm LEDs. I wasn't going to settle for anything less than exact equal light and color everywhere. I want this to look 100% stock. Maybe the stock locations on a 2004 don't work as well as the previous Rangers for using LED's.

 

I'm not sure, you really need to call and talk to Rusty. They have a roomfull of clusters, I would send him a picture of what you have and have him find the same cluster and verify that the needles will fit. Like I said I ended up getting GM needles. I still have to return the "2004 Ford" needles in both white and blue that didn't fit.

Phone number = 810.244.0909, ask for Rusty.

He's a really helpful guy, even know he's out of the office alot. Tell him I sent you his way.

 

Can't tell him you sent me when I don't know your name Turb'z lol

I might play around with that foil tape though, not a half bad idea.... Where can I get it? Anywhere? I think I saw some at Joe's near me

 

Autozone, napa, murrays pepboys

Any of those round the corner type stores.

I am looking at my roll of it now, it is "scotch 3m" Foil tape "3311"

Just a warning - this stuff IS conductive. So don't have led's touching it. I bought "liquid wire tape" in order to protect everything from shorting out.

The tape was like 6$ a roll I think.

 

I love it, that looks badass.

Edit: Im also looking into doing this, do you by a chance have the part number for your needles?

 

Did you call Rusty? If you have a 2004 just get the same needles I have (they also have them in white) - remember I painted the hats on mine blue, they were originally silver. These are GM needles, I am not sure of the year but I think it is 2003-2007.

I'm like the only customer they have had looking for 2004 Ranger needles. He will remember that it needs GM needles.

These look like the needles I have:


It says:
US Speedo Dash Gauge Needle Kit for General Motors 03-07

Item #: USS-NED010


I'm not sure if he modded these for me so they would work on the 2004 Ranger as he tested it on a cluster in his shop.

I'm linking these photos from here:
http://www.hyperformanceauto.com/Das...FoNtzEZI9tPWNh

I would buy them directly from usspeedo - this way you are buying a product from the manufacturer that understands its use. Not some joe-blow who knows nothing about your vehicle or the needles it has.

 

here's how she looks with the new needles....... I still have some work to do...

(The inside board is missing in this photo, the Idiot lights will NOT be lit up, this was just to 'get an idea' pic)

 

Holy hell... That's sick dude!

 

That is sweet... If i send you a cluster will you do mine....??? not kidding seriously.....

 

Well I don't mind, but how intense are you looking to go? I really went downtown with mine. Not to mention, I've been clusterless for an entire month. (Driving my other vehicle most of the summer)

Granted I haven't been working on it much lately, but I spent 40-80 hours on this so far. The first one is always the worst because you have to figure out what to do. Like in my Evo, I made a super LED dome light and people on the Evo forums wanted them, so I started doing them for $$$. First one took me 8 hours, now I can do them in 2.

If your still interested PM me and we can figure something out.

 

Oh My God!!!!!! Sell Me This Please!!!

 

JP7.... sounds like you could make some money on these real quick.... i got ur IM and will talk to you about this set up...

 

The mutual problem here is that a bunch of people want them, and this is a really time intensive mod at this point in my learning phase. Once I do this a crap load of times, it will become cake, but as it is right now I am just learning as I go. So, I am spending alot of time doing this, making it hard for me to charge a fair amount of money. At 10$ an hour (really cheap) so far the bill to myself would be 400$-800$ so far! - you guys aren't going to want to pay this, and I don't blame you. Let me finish mine first so I can understand what works the best and the fastest so I can figure out if there is a fair win/win way for me to do the mod quickly for people for a fair price.

I can tell you that all winter long my car will be in the garage so I won't be spending time doing performance mods on it, which will free up alot of time for doing ranger mods.

 

thats pretty ingenious, looks good. think you need to do a write up now

 

LOL I don't think R-F has enough disk space... I keep improving on my designs!

 

OK, so I am basically done with the lighting, and I've installed it, started the truck and checked what I can (basically everything but the speedo)

So far....

Great success!!!

I Love how it looks, I was so freaking out that I went out to my neighbors house just to show her (she's like 50 LOL)

Since the last pics I added more LED's where it was kinda dry to add more evenness in the lighting. The lighting is perfectly even just like stock now, and the needles all light up the same.

Oh man I love this...

 

Wow man that looks awesome. I love the kinda moon effect behind the needle bases.

 

Looks great! My friend wants to help me do this, and hes pretty good with electronics and coming up with new ideas, I was just wondering if you could just at least post a good pick that shows any additional LEDS you added, and which ones to use. We should be able to do something similar.

 

I didnt use the stock spots at all, I made all of the lighting with individual component LED's.

I'll make a map for you with the extra cluster I have. Just not tonight, I have done absolutely nothing this weekend except LED this thing. I'm pigging out on poptarts now.

Oh yeah, you MUST use the 360 LED's from superbrightleds.com to make it work like I did if you dont want to use plugins. Plugins work just fine, but I wanted a stock smooth lighting appearance.

 

looks amazing!

welp theres always one good thing to see you got there,
GAS! lol im always empty

 

Sounds good man, I do have a question about how the needles work. I seen how you just spun em off, but when you put them back on, how do you know where they go? Do they like self adjust or something?

 

When you put them back on you need to twist them down just like you took them off. push a bit but spin as you go down.

when i took the clear white face off of the cluster before i started playing with the internals i took photos of where the needles where when i gently twisted them with the littlest bit of force in the counterclockwise position (basically at zero) if you do this the needle will NOT slip on the shaft like you need it to when you remove them. When you get all your work done and put everything back together just line them up the same way, so that when they are at the end of their travel it hits the same position. I will test for accuracy with a scanner and GPS. My warmed up idle is saying 750 now, and i think thats just about right? any other 3.0 owners can confirm?

 

So basically, you just took a photo of how they looked before you removed them, and then just put them back on in the same position?

 

no - this is very important that you think about this...

I took a photo of where the counterclockwise non-slipping motion stopped and i put them back in that position so the counterclockwise non-slipping motion stopped in the same position....

if you turn gently, they move till they stop, if you keep pushing they slip..... the "resting" position on a stock cluster is NOT the edge of the non-slipping motion.