Change Dial Face / Upgrade Dial SMD's

Changing the dial face is a fairly involved task, but however, a quite a simple one. The standard orange dials and needles are not to everyone's taste and look quite dated. To change the dial face, you will obviously need to source a new face first. I had mine personallised by Skewer

Instructions on how to change your dial face:

1. Remove dial cluster
2. Remove the front transparent plastic cover. This is held on by a series of clips, 2 at the bottom and 4 along the top.
3. Remove the grey plastic cowl that overhangs the dials which fits over the dial face. This is held in by a series of clips, and 3 screws.
4. Remove the speedo and rev counter needles. These need to be prised away from the dial face. The easiest method is to use 2 spoons. Position either spoon to the left and right of the needle centre and wedge them under the black centre piece and lift slowly. Try to lift with equal pressure on both sides to ensure the needle is lifted away as upright as possible. Too much pressure on one side may result in the spindle the needle is attached to bending or even snapping.
5. The stock dial face is glued to the clear plastic light diffuser underneath. Slide a thin knife under the old dial face vinyl and lift from any glue that is holding it down. Usually it is held down with 2 small drops.
6. Remove old dial face.
7. Remove needle resing pins from the old dial face. To do this, you will need to turn the dial face over and cut away a small amount of the back of the pin mounting with a sharp stanley knife. Not much is required to be cut. This will soon be able to be pushed out.
8. Place the rest pins into your new dial face and put a dab of glue at the back of each.

9. Optionally, you can put a couple of drops of glue on the back of the new face to fix to the clear plastic light diffuser.
10. You may wish to change the needle colour from the stock orange. The needles are painted on the underside face. Remove this paint with a sharp blade or nail varnish remover. Paint the underside to the colour of your choice. Be warned that lighter colours will illuminate far better than say darker blues or reds.
11. Reassemble but do not put the needles back on or the front clear plastic cover just yet.
12. Refit the cluster back to the dashboard and reconnect the 2 cables to the rear, and screw back into place via the 3 screws.
13. Recalibrate the speedo and rev counter needles
14. Replace the clear plastic cover, and black plastic cowl.

	These are the Toyota stock dials for a pre-facelift Celica 190.
Here are the dials with chrome rings added.
	This is Version 1 of my custom made dials.
And here is Version 2.

I was unhappy with the first set of SMT's that I installed, so to get an even brighter light behind the dial face I also took this opportunity while I had the dials out to upgrade the SMT's to larger and brighter (8000 mcd) LEDs.
SMT Set 1
SMT Set 2

Guide 1 to Change Dial Face SMD's (LED's)
Guide 2 to Change Dial Face SMD's (LED's)

The stock SMT's are yellow and hence limit the options as to what colours can be used on the dial face itself. I previously fitted minature ultra white SMT's but in order to achieve a brighter more evenly spread light behind the dial faces I upgraded these to much larger 8000mcd SMT's. Soldering these bigger SMT's to the circuit board is quite difficult as they are slightly wider than the solder points themselves, but it is can stll be done - just be careful not to spread solder to any other contact points on the board.

	These are the Toyota stock SMT's. These are fairly bright, but yellow limits new dial face colour possibilities.
First attempt was to install these miniature ultra white SMT's, 2500mcd.
	Second attempt. Larger and much much brighter ultra white 8000mcd SMTs. These are extremely bright and can barely be looked at directly.
Here are the 3 types of SMT's side by side. On the left is the Toyota stock, middle is my first upgrade attempt of miniature ultra white's, and the one on the right are my current 8000mcd set.

More pictures are in Gallery 5 (Interior)