Sometimes I fiddle with my car because it needs it, sometimes because I think it improves it, and sometimes I just fiddle because I can  .
I recently had the dash out of my car and found myself with the speedo in my hand. That seemed like a good enough reason to take it apart.
First step is using a sharp screwdriver unpeel the tabs holding the rim on.
Remove the rim and then lever out the perspex and the inner cover(with the gear pattern on). Followed by removing the speedo mechanism which is retained by the two slotted screws in the back.
Conveniently the speedo face is made up of two parts, a piece of perspex with the writing on and a coloured backing piece, these are retained by two small pins which can just about be persuaded out by levering a screwdriver between the face plate and the plastic body.
But before the face can be removed it's necessary to pull the needle from it's spindle, not difficult but having done so I realised there was no reference point to aide with putting it back in the right place, which is why before sealing it back up again I'm going to need to borrow a sat nav to check the calibration, doh.
With the coloured face in my hand it was still an unattractive shade of greeny grey but a piece of satin black 'sticky back plastic' soon fixed that.
Painting it would have worked just as well, as would using fake carbon fibre for the particularly chavy, or wood veneer effect for the completely tasteless.
Moving on to the fuel gauge, it was less cooperative, the face retaining pins had to be pressed out.
That's a 4mm socket on the left and the shiny 'drift' pushing the pin out, is a piece of 1.6mm welding rod.
Plus the writing is painted directly onto the face, so I lightly center punched the three spots before giving it a quick flash with the rattle can. When the paint was dry I 'twiddled' a small drill bit by hand in the punch marks to give three shiny reference points. Forget the 0, 1/2 and 1 writing, I'm sure I can remember which end is which.
Lastly I painted the front face, I didn't worry about keeping the gear pattern icon, but it could look good with some other logo in it's place, I just couldn't think of anything.
Reassembly is doing what was done earlier but t'other way round, or however that saying goes!
And there you go, although the center does look a little bare, I'm quite happy with that. I considered painting some part a contrasting colour, but in the end decided all black was classier. I haven't yet painted the plastic surround and it crossed my mind to do it red to match the body, but I think I'll stick with the black. Oh and I polished the aluminium rim.
The sharp eyed amongst you may have noticed the two little stop pegs for the speedo needle, one for when it's stationary, and one for 'z' mph(flat out), and how the flat out one seems to have been removed. I wonder how fast it will go now?
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the piece of wood was a miscalculation in the clamp size.
