Installing Indiglo (or any) gauge faces–

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First of all, there are a few things to think about. Since this task is such a pain in the ass, if you are doing anything to your gauges like changing the color of the lights, hooking up your fogs so they can turn on without the headlights on or putting on a bezel overlay, you’d better do this all at once. The whole thing, from A to Z, took me about 3 hours.

Some things to think about:

  1. Your car is over 10 years old. The plastic is brittle, so be careful. I learned the hard way and cracked off a piece before being gentler.
  2. Honda didn’t make all the edges on internal parts on this car smooth. I learned the hard way then got smart and put duct tape over the sharp edges.

Tools you will need:

Socket wrench

4” wobble extension

10mm socket

#2 Phillips screwdriver

Electrical tape

Wire cable ties

Soldering iron

Solder

Step 1: Removing trim

There are 3 screws that hold on the plastic panel underneath the steering wheel. One on the bottom left corner, one on the bottom right corner and the screw above the change tray. Use the Phillips screwdriver to remove them.

Also take off the screws to your center console. Two screws on each side and two under the ledge where a/c vents are removed with the screwdriver. One screw under the ashtray should also be removed.

Removing the knee guard isn’t required, but it makes things much easier. If you do, take the four golden 10mm bolts out from the left and right of the guard (you’ll have to lift out the center console to get to the bolt on the right side of the guard.)

Then, to remove the gauge shroud (the big black piece of plastic that covers the gauge pod) start with removing the four screws located in the illustration below.

The two arrows on the bottom refer to screws under the dash, next to the steering column. A better picture of the screw on the left and the right is shown below.

Then, you need to pop out the panel under the Fan and AC control and the small plastic panel on the bottom right of the AC controls to expose three screws which must also be removed. Be careful, as the plastic might be brittle.

After removing all the screws, don’t remove the bezel just yet. I’d suggest removing the steering column cover too. Here’s how.

First, take out the two screws under the steering column as show in the diagram on the right.

Then you need to remove the metal snap ring that is near the top of the steering column cover, closest to the steering wheel. See the diagram on the left to see what it looks like. I used the screwdriver to catch one of the ends and stretched it enough to take it off. You’ll need to remove this otherwise the gauge shroud won’t come out very easily. After you remove the screws and the snap ring, you’ll need to squeeze the top half of the cover and play with it a little to get it off.

Then comes the fun part. To remove the gauge shroud, I started in the middle where the plastic is the strongest, and pulled at the top of the shroud just in front of the top of the steering wheel. You will have to use some finesse and use your fingers to get under the plastic so you don’t break pieces off. You will have to take your time and remove the whole shroud before the gauge pod will come out. Especially tough to get off was the air vent nearest the driver door. The plastic is so flimsy there, you have to be careful to start from the middle and work your way out. It might be helpful to pull off the mirror switch and unplug the switch and any other switch on the shroud. Take your time and everything will be fine. Just make sure all the screws have been removed. Otherwise it is simply friction fit (no clips).

Step 2: Removing the Gauge Pod

After you have the shroud off, you’ll have to remove four more screws that hold the gauge pod in.


Now you are ready to take the gauge pod out. No tools are necessary, but you’ll pull down the gauge pod from the top toward the steering wheel. The left side of the pod will slide out further than the right side. This is because the speedometer cable is attached behind the speedometer. Two wire harnesses are clipped to the back of the gauge pod and can easily be removed by pushing in a clip on the top of each plug. A single clip that can be removed by pressing on it holds the speedometer cable in. Because there is little slack on the cable, you will have to slide your hand back there to unclip it.

After removing the speedometer cable, you should be able to remove the gauge pod completely. This is what it looks like after doing so.


Note: Gauge faces (Indiglo or not) come in many different types, brands and whatnot, so I’ll leave the instructions to the manufacturers, but I’ll cover what wires I used for power and ground and give some tips on my experience (which might be different from yours next.

The gauge faces I chose were the silver reverse glow set for procarparts.com. They sell for $59.95 on their web site, but I got them for $24.95 off Ebay. When they arrives, they had no instructions with them, but I’m a pretty smart guy and I figured it out.

Disassembling the gauge pod was pretty simple. I took the silver screws off the top of the pod, which holds the metal straps that keep the pod together, and then used my hand to push on the tabs, which keep the pod, snapped together.

The type of gauges I got didn’t have any adhesive or any way to hold the gauge faces on, but at least they didn’t require removing the gauge needles. That’s a real pain from what I have heard.

Step 3: Applying the gauge faces

To help with positioning the gauge faces, I got some two-sided poster tape to hold the temperature and gas gauge faces on. Screws hold on the speedometer and tachometer gauge faces, so they will have to be removed and screwed back on over the gauge faces. I used a little bit of the two-sided tape just so the gauge faces would stay down.

The wires for the gauge faces were taped together and routed through a hole I made using a Dremel. Here is a view of the back of the gauge pod and the wires coming through a hole.

I also wanted to have the illumination from the gauges only after I reinstalled the pod, so I had to cut the wires on the top of the pod, which go to a light that illuminated the front of the gauges. This lighting is no longer needed. Be sure to tape the ends of the wire because they could otherwise cause a short and blow fuses. Trust me. You only want to do this once in your lifetime!

Step 4: Wiring it up

The kit I got required a two-wire hookup only. It came with a wiring harness which connected to a black-box transformer and a control panel which had a dimmer and a switch that you can toggle between the blue and green (not really green, more like blue-green). That all had to be mounted somewhere. The two wires were for +12 volts and ground only and the wires were NOT interchangeable. Some DC lighting kits don’t care what wire is what. But, in this case, it did. I found good sources of ground and UNDIMMED +12 volts right at the back of the dimmer switch for the factory lighting.

There are three wires coming out of the dimmer switch. One Red, One Black and one Red with a black stripe. Use the black for the ground, and the Red with Black stripe for the undimmed +12 volts.

Once I tested the connections, I soldered the wires on and covered them in tape. One tip – one thing to be sure of is not to touch the exposed connections on the control panel. I found out the hard way. Ouch! I ended up taping over those so I couldn’t get shocked again. Once I checked out the functionality of the Indiglo gauges, I check to make sure all of the idiot lights in the dash still worked too. Everything worked except the turn signals. I wondered why until I remember the hazard light switch is on the gauge shroud, which wasn’t plugged in yet. So, I plugged it in just to make sure. Yep, without the hazard light switch plugged in, the turn signals don’t work.

Step 5: Putting it all back together

It was really pretty easy doing all of the stuff, but it took a lot of time. The hardest part of the whole thing was to put the speedometer cable back on. That took time and patience. I ended up shoving the right side of the gauge pod deep into the dash and cramming my arm back there to get the cable on. It was a major pain in the ass, and I got some scratches, which drew a little blood, but it was doable. The remainder was just putting it all back together, but in reverse order. Just remember, put all the screws in the right places in each step before proceeding to the next step, otherwise, you’ll spend too much time ripping all out again. BTW, I also installed a carbon-fiber bezel overlay. I think the combination looks awesome.
Here is the finished product: