Speedo maintenance question

[tulsacarman]

I can't take the speedometer cable noise anymore so I plan to pull it to lubricate it. While I'm in there I want to take care of the only other issue with it. Everything lights up on it except the needles. I drive at night and have to turn on the dome light to see where the needle is on the gauge.

I have the tach cluster. I can't recall if the bulbs were marked on the back or not. Anyone know which one to replace?

[bravekozak]

check them all

Quarter turn out on each bulb. check if burnt out.
Also check the two small bulbs on top.

[Pu241]

While your in there you might as well replace them all.
Remember they're pushing 20 yrs old, unless they have been replaced before.
So they're all pretty dim I'll bet.
194 for the cluster bulbs and I don't know the bulb number for the light bar bulbs.

[tulsacarman]

Quarter turn out on each bulb. check if burnt out.
Also check the two small bulbs on top.

Yeah, should be pretty easy to figure out but I've put off the decision to go to bifocals for about 3 years now. Those little stinkers are too small to hold out far enough that it's not blurry. I think I'll either make a test pigtail from a scrapper or (as the next post suggests) just replace them all.

Thanks guys. Three to four inches supposed to fall tomorrow. Probably a good day to mess with it.

[TominMO]

Also while you're in there, notice that the light bar above the gauges has a rectangular plastic piece in there, between the lights and the gauges. It should be mostly black, with little slits to let light fall on the main gauges. Take it off, and you will notice a huge improvement in lighting. You might even have to back off the intensity with the dimmer switch.

Also, you can completely take the cluster apart and remove some of the moulding on the white plastic housing, behind the instruments, with a Dremel or something. you will see what I mean; they have built little light shields into the white plastic housing. No idea why. But just getting rid of the piece I mentioned in paragraph 1 will probably be all you need, except for the trip odo.

[tulsacarman]

Thanks for the advice. They sure can use some improvement in that area. I did the "Escort dome light with the map lights" installation that's been covered in this forum for just that very reason. Huuuuuuuge improvement in interior lighting plus the two map lights are great.