Well, I have finally gotten off my arse and started pulling my car apart today for the "fix up" stage of my project while i wait for $ for the new motor. basically im just gonna spend time fixing up all those small probs that are easy to fix, but take time (ie, involving pulling the whole dash out to trouble shoot a loose connection in the wiring loom under there somewhere). I started to pull the dash out, and after pulling the Instrument cluster out, i thought i'd open it up and see just how hard it would be to change the colour from the awful 80's green to something a bit more "rice" like blue, or even purple ?. This is the dash just after I had taken the instrument cluster out. You can see here, the date on the dash is -5 AUG 1987, as the car is a S2 Calais. This is a front on shot of the instrument cluster as a whole. S2 Calais with 227847kms on the clock. This is a pic from the back. In the pic, I am missing 2 globes from the back of the dash, the top one is the "Low Coolant" warning globe i intentionally removed as i dont have a sensor for the coolant in my radiator, and hence the light stayed on and annoyed me. The other one, just below it, is for another globe, most likely used on Exec/Berlina class VL's that have a "Low Oil Pressure" or similar icon instead of the Oil Pressure Guage. I started pulling it apart by removing the top 5 screws from the top circut board and removing it along with the globes. This turned out to be an extra step that isnt always needed. Another 2 small screws from behind the top row of lamp icons saw this part of the dash removed and out of the way. Back over to the front, 6 screws hold on the plastic cover of the dash, which comes off to give you access into all the pretty instruments, where we can wreak havok. 2 small screws hold on the face of the dash with the tacho numbers printed on them. 2 more for the other side. The middle face is held in with a thin connecting strip (one of which are missing on mine). The tacho Needle, came off with a little bit of persuasion, and will go back on without too much trouble. Pic of the back of the face of the tacho side of the dash. As you can see, there are some green parts, some white parts, and the obvious black. The Green parts are where it will shine through to the dash as green, the white parts, will still shine through green, although not as bright, and the black wont allow any through at all. I could not see any way here to separate the green sheet from out of this dash face. This is me holding up the middle part of the dash face, to show the 2 icons and placement of the 2 red warning icons on the S2 Calais dash. Getting back to the dash, this is with the speedo side of the dash face removed (once again 2 small screws holding the face in place). The speedo needle takes a bit to come off, and be very careful doing this as you can bend the needle interface, or break the needle quite easily. This is the rear side of the Speedo side of the dash face. Once again, there is the Green, White and Black parts, and once again, no see-able way of removing the green part without taking a stanley knife to it with precision, and even then, it looks doubtful of only taking that layer off instead of cutting all the way through. The speedo numbers are illuminated green by these 2 Green plastic rectangle pieces which are sitting out of thier spots. While very easy to replace with another colour - where on earth can you find a bit of transparent plastic the same shape and size as that ? It was about this time, i figured about the Digital Clock had a bit of Green Transparent plastic over it to make it look green (I always thought it was the actual counter on the circut board that was green). This is a pic of the black surounding removed. And this is the surrounding of the clock, with the Green Transparent Plastic removed, should be pretty easy to find a square bit of plastic to go replace that of different colour if i want to. After all of that, I'm not sure where to go from here. I've heard "around the campfire" that the green plastic sheeting behind the dash face can just be "removed", but I am unable to see how, without taking a stanley knife and cutting it away - and even then, how to stop going all the way through ?, if you do go all the way through, how on earth do you get things like a "0" to stay in one piece without the centre falling out. Has anyone done this before? Anyone give me any hints on this? Sorry about the massive amounts of photo's, but im sure they will be able to help other people do the same if they want - all i need to know is then next step. (Yes, i know changing the dash colours wont give me more power, but its something to do while i do wait for the $ to buy more power in the form of an rb30et to replace the atmo thing i have atm. call me rice, but im bored, and am relieving it by doing useless stuff to the car while i dont have a licence). Some original photos have not been recovered yet.

mate your a champion - this is GOLD - should be put up on the main!

try a perspex shop for different colour plastic's if you can't find it you can always try some cellofane (spelling) but check it won't melt from the globes (which i doubt) and as for the green parts behind the speedo, just cut them out with a stanly knife as you said. I would personally find a stock exec dash and mod that first and see how you go as they are prety cheap...

awesome stuff !!! should be put up in main as a guide when finished.... great photos!! cant wait to see end results ! :mrgreen:

Mark... for the cutting of the green bits, don't use a stanly knife, they're too hard to manouver around, and just too awkward to cut with. What you wanna do is go into like an artist supply shop, and get a No. 9 Scalpel handle, and No.11 blades... very easy to use, and won't be any more than about $10 with 2 blades. If ya want someone handy with a scalpel to have a go, let me know, i use one day in day out trimming paper down.

a couple of other tips:- * careful with the paint an the dash face as it is quite easy to smudge and or scratch. *the easiest way i have found to get the speedo and tacho needles off is to slide a fork under the centre of the needle and pry it up gently. *when refitting the needles, just sit them on first and move the needle up and let it fall a couple of times to make sure it is zeroing before you push it all the way on. Good work InsaneVL, there have been numerous threads about changing dash colour so im sure this info will be very informative to a lot of people. I think its a good idea what was said about playing round with a cheap sl or exec dash first!, just in case. make sure you post pics of the finished product!

Good work dude! And as said b4, It should be put up at ct as a article/info

yeah... sure will take pics of everything else i'll do on it, make a real good article. The reason for all the pics and detail is because i see a thread about changing the colour about once a month at least, and someone always says "just use coloured bulbs or those condom thingys" :roll:, thought i'd dispell the myth's and bring out the truth. Another thing I also found out, is that once all the above was pulled out, access to the odometer was just there. And for curiosity sake, i wondered how easy it was to pull a few kms off the clock. It took me roughly 1hr to manually wind back about 10,000 kms. Then, i found an easier way to take it back to 000000 within a few mins. As a new motor is going into the car anyway before it heads out, and with being able to buy new dash's with 000000 on the clock anyway, I thought i'd leave it there. I will be keeping the car for a long time (ie, not trying to fob it off as a "low kms" car), And will make it easier to see how much kms i've done with the new motor going in. I wont detail any more about how to actually wind the kms back, but suffice to say, any one with some intelligence can do it quite easily. It should also go to prove that you can not always rely on the kms displayed on the dash. (my odometer was about 20,000 kms out anyway as the motor in there atm was from another car that had 20,000 more on the clock before being put into this car). With no licence, it makes it hard to get around to automotive/electronic/hobby shops to see what i can do about changing the colour of the dash in the easiest most efficient way without stuffing it up is. I'll head into work a bit early during the week and have a look around for some idea's. One idea I did have, was to get a high resolution colour photo copy of the dash faces, cut out the bits i want lit up, glue or some other way of adhering the photo copy onto a piece of blue (or other colour of choice) transparent plastic, and put that in instead of the original (and keep the original in case i ever want to change it back). I suppose i could also keep the plastic clear, and use coloured bulbs to make it easier to change to different colours if the need arises. Also, I might be able to "design" my own dash face, with some spiffy grafics of turbo's and stuff in the process . I will check out the feasibility of this method in the next few days. Rob - you might be able to help out in this department. PM me if you are able to help out at all. Some original photos have not been recovered yet.

Anything can be done... What you'd need to do to make things easier is to draw the whole lot in photoshop... high res photo copies are still not 100%. So then you can just print it onto a poly propelyne page to make things easy. Then i can just cut around the lot with a surgical scalpel and glue it on the colour sheet. Thats just a 10 min thought on it.... i'll have a look through some of the old job folders at work cos i know we have done something similar, not sure if we outsourced it though.

i had this idea for the gear selector part a while back, i was going to scan the stock one, make a new design, print it, cut out the leters and hey presto a custom selector graphic. So yeah insted of "drawing" it in photoshop, scan it and then start modifying it.

someone is one bored ****er :P

i did this with my old clock version dash , just incase i ****ed it up , changing the speedo and tacho green implants is basically non-do-able , being stuck between the black sheets etc. slicing them with scalpel may be ok , but then u gotta affix new polycarbonate or whatever material u can find to be opaque enuf etc. good luck though mark if u do find a simple way give me a pm , i would like blue in mine still.

there was that walky in street commos which had an alloy cnc cut face , that looked ok but coulda been better , there is another option for a new look

Nice article mark... good to see the pics too.. not that i didn't know what a dis assembled dash looked like anyway.. but good for people who couldn't be ****ed takin there own apart.. also answers alot of peoples questions... hrmm.. might be an idea to get some of those white dash face things like matt had ? or maybe contact the company and see if they can modify the colours of the one they make for the vl ? anyway.. top work dude.. Ollie

I have just found out that www.emtechautomotive.com.au this place sells white faced VL dash faces. I have just sent them an email enquiring about the illumination colour of these dials and to see if they make any other colours. When I get the email back I'll put up the results.

hmmm..... I just got a really rice idea.. I wonder how much a sheet of EL costs *thinks* might be a bit hard to implement though... will have a look around in the next few days, see what materials i can lay my hands on for the custom touch while its opened up Some original photos have not been recovered yet.

Someone from on here designed this, i saved it for some reason! Some original photos have not been recovered yet.

i think there was talk on here na while ago about using EL sheeting to make up a custom dash!, dont know who it was but.

gweeeds had a similar thing implemented on his car. www.gweeds.net

If you do find a good way of doing it Mark, by all means let me know... i have a massive tax cheque coming in, and 2 weeks holiday leave in August.... i want to do a few things to clean it up a little. Ordered a full set of FE2 springs today. The only thing is, i want to do something a little different... i want all the dash lighting to be white. If you've seen a Nokia 8310 you'll know what i'm talking about.... well i wanna do the same thing.