A couple more I just clicked tonight.

 

Regarding international shipping, I have some advice, especially for destination Germany:

My sets have both still not arrived. USPS has the great disadvantage of quitting tracking after the package leaves the US.

This has already happened to me last year with a calendar I ordered. Four weeks nothing, wrote to the seller, he sent out a replacement, then exactly one day later the original calendar arrived and a couple days later the replacement.

Another USPS package (ordered later than the rings went out) arrived a couple of days after ordering, totally ripped up.

My Rockauto delivery by FedEx arrived completely unharmed and also within a week, full tracking from beginning to end.

I guess the rings are on some shelf in some huge warehouse of our customs offices, waiting to be opened by some customs officer's greedy hands, just to repack them and send me a tiny note to come and pick them up.
Damn, I hate customs!

Edit:
Well, as usual, as soon as I start complaining, I walk down to my letter box and see the note to come pick up my first set of rings
I'll be polishing them now and post pics when done. Thanks

Customs claimed that even when declared as gift, they need a reference value... so the customs officer looked up some reference value of 20 euros which still left me below the tax value, so I did not have to pay anything.

 

...

 

...

 

Of course it's ok, Luis. Glad to help.

 

...

 

Is your gauge cluster modified? The needles of my gauge cluster do not glow.

 

Mine? It's 100% factory original. These gauge rings are the first non-stock item I'll have ever put in the car's interior in 26 years.

 

My dash must need fixing then

 

Hey Luis,

I hope the second set arrives within about a week or two from now.
I'll keep you posted

To the others:
Has anyone of you had to do what I did to get the rings in straight?
I tried to heat up the dash bezel but somehow I can't get it to flatten properly, so I got some flexible glue with gap filling properties and used a vise to get the rings properly glued on.
Still waiting for the second ring's glue to dry right now.

 

...

 

Hey Luis,

My son took a few more shots use' em if you want.

 

...

 

Luis,
How invasive are the white gauge overlays ? If you wanted to change back would the original surface be affected by the adhesive ?

 

...

 

Is there any way to make the needles glow?

 

No, not really.

You might be able to put some sort of glow-in-the-dark sticker or paint on them, or run a small LED set up on them...maybe, but it would take a lot of work and I personally don't think it would look very good.

 

Btw:

I promised pics, so here they are
The rings have been polished a little, so they reflect more than they did coming out of the box.

 

glow in the dark paint would look out of place, sorry if i get off the gauge ring topic for a sec, but I had an idea the other day (an idea which I will try later) is to get an EL wire, red or any other color and just wrap it around the gauges like so the excess would be covered by the plate thing and it would smoothly illuminate the gauges. here is a link to the EL wire that i am referring to http://www.ebay.ca/itm/3ft-Flexible-...item27c028cce8
and another thirdgen member has this on his car, just not on the gauges, this is "TheFab"'s interior

 

I would think that maybe some flourscent orange would look fine in the day & really pic up the light and make them "glow" (just a brighter shine really) really good.

Maybe http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/MAR...-Marker-21U677 ? Found lots of UV paints or spray cans, but you wouldn't need much so the spray can would have a LOT of excess to paint just the needles.

 

Reminds me of Tron Legacy. I like that.

 

I wanted to do this to my car but right now i have to focus on basic functionality lol

 

Luiz,

the second set of rings has finally arrived yesterday

Thanks

 

...

 

The Second set was for me

It looks awsome!!!!!! Give some sort of "3D Effect" love it!

It looks like it come from factory. Before i had always the feeling something is missing.

I have made some before and after pics.

You are free to use them

 

...

 

...

 

Does hot glue work for installation?

 

it does but if you were looking for a temporary installation just use rubber bands to hold them in, like put the elastic around the gauge ring and then push the ring in

 

I had serious difficulties getting the rings to stay in my 90's bezel properly. Hot glue is ok to just fix them in their position but to secure them properly you'll need some powerful glue, pressure and time.

 

Yep, rubber bands do work well especially if you want to be able to remove them if you get tired of them without damaging the factory cluster. I don't think that will ever happen though as I never get tired of looking at mine and I get all kinds of compliments on them. I may mount them more permanent in the future, but for now the rubber bands hold and hold well.

 

I got mine and I LOVE them, they fit and look great. Thanks Luis, you have done us all a great service. Anyone that is on the fence, get these, they are cheap and look brilliant

 

...

 

Hey luis, would you be interested in making another set or have another set for sale? I'm super interested and cannot find anyone around here that will make them.

Thanks!

 

If more of these ever become for sale, I want !

 

...

 

Will be buying as soon as you post, thank you.

 

Here are some pics of something I experimented with. I had an instrument cluster sitting around storage, so I sprayed the inner bezel with chrome paint, then laid the dash bezel with the trim rings over it(there's no lens between them) to see how it would look.

My thought was that the trim rings might look more fitting if the bright finish went all the way back to the faces of the gauges, like on newer cars. It came out looking good, but not like I hoped it would... which is why it's always good to experiment on extra parts first lol. With white faced gauges I think this would look very good, but I won't be installing white faces, and I'm not liking it with the stock gauge faces.

I like the idea of white gauge faces, but the ones available for our cars are too plain-looking for me. If white faces had a silver "grid" pattern on them, similar to the design of the stock faces, then I think the bright look I mocked-up would work very good.

So I won't be installing this. Just presenting the idea.

 

What kind of chrome paint did you use?

 

Dupli-Color Chrome. It's one of the few "chrome" spray paints that produces a decent finish. It's obviously not as realistic-looking as chrome, nor is it as shiny and reflective as one of those expensive chrome spray products, but it does produce a softly-reflective finish that's better than most off-the-shelf "chrome" spray paints, while being priced in the same range as off-the-shelf spray paints.

This wasn't worth buying one of those expensive chrome spray products, so I did a web search for chrome spray paints to see if any of them produced good results, and Dupli-Color's was one of the more highly-reviewed paints. With the right surface prep, which I did not do, you can get some very nice results with it.

And apparently the "right" surface prep for achieving a nice finished product is to lay down gloss black first, then top-coat with the chrome spray paint. IIRC, that's not on the can's label, but that's how most people claimed to be getting the best results, and the pics they posted were good. I didn't do that, and it still came out decently.

 

I'm also interested in a set as soon as you have a batch made up. They look spectacular!

 

I too would like to pick up a set when they come up for sale. Please PM me.

 

Finally got around to putting them in. The rubber bands idea was great, they just barely fit. Crappy cell pics, but yo get the idea.
Thanks Luis.

 

looks great, who did your gauges?

 

NICE! I'll second the previous poster..forget the rings, who did your gauge cluster? That's sweet!

 

...

 

Hey Motobooks, I'm up for a set if/when you have another batch made. I have an '84 as well and these would be an awesome addition.

Please PM me and I'll purchase right away.

 

...

 

No big rush on my part, I just arrived in Brazil and will be here for 4 weeks. (this won't affect the purchase/shipping to Houston if you have them earlier) Thanks for taking the initiative and helping your third gen brothers out!

 

I'm deffinately interested in a set let me know! I've been looking for a year for these and have't found a single set =[