led gauge needles

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so i had some white 5mm 15000 mcd leds leftover and decided to do something different to my gauges. i was getting tired of my indiglo gauges that i had put in when i was younger, but i liked the white faces (gle's came w/ black-faced gauges). so, i cut the wires going to my indiglo gauge face overlays and installed some leds to light up the needles. here's how:

take out your instrument cluster. look at the back. 95-96's should have 6 194 bulbs in the back with brown twist bases. you can twist those out, and take out a couple bulbs, you'll need to use some bases later.

take the gauges out of the cluster. each one is held by 3-4 screws on the back of the cluster, so just unscrew them, save the screws, and carefully take out each 4 of the gauges.

now, if you look carefully, there is clear plastic below each gauge face. it is designed in such a way that the light from the 6 194 bulbs you twisted out get redirected to the center of each of the 4 needles as well as the odometer and trip, so you can read those at night. now, on the smaller gauges (fuel level and engine temp), there are only 1 spot on the clear plastic that 'uptakes' light. on each the speedometer and the tach, there are 2 spots that 'uptake' light. that gives a total of 6 spots that take in light from a nearby light source. therefore i used 6 leds total, each pointing in the 'spot' as shown in this pic. then i secured it w/ some electrical tape. i also used a couple mini zip ties here and there. it's not an exact science, but it's a tight fit when u put everything back in, so be forewarned. that actually may be a good thing though, since the traction from wires in a tight space can help hold your leds where you want them. so use that to your advantage.
you can use how ever many you want, in any array you want, just make sure you double check your calculations so you don't blow something up later.
i used 2 series of 3 leds w/ a 100 ohm resistor in line. that's what worked out well for me, i divided the instrument cluster in half and used 1 194 socket on each side as a power supply to 3 leds wired in series.

just a sample pic of the back of the tach, 2 of the leds wired in series.

the nice thing about 95-96 instrument clusters is, once you run your wires out the back, put them in contact w/ the copper connections for the 194 bulbs, and then use an empty bulb holder and twist it in to secure your contacts. im not completely sure if terminals make a difference or not, but im fairly certain they do. you need to trace each of the two copper connections to see which one is + and which one is grnd.

this pic really doesn't do the needles justice. i guess the camera doesn't capture it well. for those w/o indiglo gauge overlays like me, youre gauges will be more illuminated. because the gauge overlays completely block out light, i can't see the numbers except where the needles are, which was the kind of effect i was going for. i thought it would be unique to only be able to see the numbers wherever the needle was running.
so back to this pic, in reality my needles don't seem to have as much as a 'glow' effect as captured in this picture, and i can see more numbers as well around where the needle tips are. even if i couldn't see them, it probably wouldn't matter to me since i've been driving this car for like 9 years and i know where the numbers are anyway.

hope this helps.