'03 - '05 Instrument cluster customizing.

[cruizerman]

Hey guys!

I wanted to add a little personal touch to my '03 cluster, so I made the following mod. I'll try to keep the 'structions short and sweet, and I have detailed pictures of the steps below! These steps will work for the '03 to '05 GM full size trucks and SUVs ONLY. The following instructions are GUIDLINES only! Your at your own risk!! CLICK ON THE PICS for the fullsize images!

TOOLS Needed:
Flat blade screwdriver (X2) or two metal / hard plastic forks (clean prefereably)
Windex
Paper towels or soft cloths
Angled new X-acto knife blade
7mm socket, extension, and driver or drill
Color gels (I'll explain later in the instructions)
New pack of upgrade needles

Total time from start to finish: 30 Min to 1 hour (depends on how far you go with the decal plate mod!)

1. Pull your dash bezel off. To do this, Drop your steering wheel down to the lowest angle, put the key in the ignition and turn the key forward to the first indent. This unlocks the column and the shifter. Hold down on the brake, and pull the shifter down to 1st gear. Grab ahold of the right upper corner of the bezel and pull straight out. Work your way all the way around the perimeter until the bezel is loose, then pull the top of the bezel up and out from under the lip of the dashboard. It will strike the hazard flasher and turn them on (this is normal ).




2. Now, using a 7mm socket and extension, remove the 4 bolts holding the cluster in place (fig. A and B)


3. pull the cluster out and remove the plug from the back of the cluster (Fig. C)



4. Set the cluster on a workbench (coffee table will do), and carefully pop the 5 plastic clips that are holding the plastic window to the cluster (3 on top, 2 on the bottom. Don't remove the clips holding the back of the cluster on) (Fig D and E). Be very carefull as to not break any of them.


5. Before removing the needles, take a fine tipped sharpie marker and mark on the label exactly where the needes are facing, so you can line them up later. Mark on the label in an area where you know the top bezel cover will hide them. (Fig. F) Now, using two strong forks or two clean and long flat blade screwdrivers, stick them underneath the needle body from direct opposite sides and push down on the ends of the screwdrivers or forks. This will create enough leverage to pop the needle off the shaft without bending them or breaking the needles.

6. Once all of the needles are removed, remove the decal plate by pulling it out of the three mounting tabs (Fig. F)




7. Flip the decal over, and using one of the 3 flat 'n' dull sides of an x-acto knife blade, carefully scrape the "color" off of the areas you want the lights to be able to penetrate easier and glow white (Fig. H, I, and J). Don't use the sharp side of the blade! This step is needed if you are going to add a color gel sheet to the back of the decal plate and you want a uniform color bleed. Scrape away any of the colored areas tha tyou want to change. I used an LED white penlight to shine behind the decal once I finished each section to see how the light shines through.

8. At this point, you can do several things. You can take a colored gel filter like what they use on stage lighting, cut it to fit, and insert it behind the decal plate. Or, you can unsolder the original light bulbs and replace them with LEDs, or you can leave the light bulbs and add in some LEDs to the white plastic holder that lies under the decal plate. The options are kinda endless. It just sucks that the bolds are a 4 pin soldered type that aren't easy to remove at all. Thats why a color gel or additional LED lights could make up the difference.

9. Start your reassembly, going pretty much in reverse order of what you see above. Once you get to the needles, now is a good time to replace them with clear needles or escalade/denali ones. The stock orange needles on the '03-'05 are solid orange. You can't "scrape" the orange off like you can on the older trucks. Line up each needle over the shaft and carefully push the needles until it almost touches the decal plate. Leave a little room so that there is no drag on the stepper motor when it sweeps at startup everytime.

10. Leave the outer plastic window/bezel OFF untill after you hook the cluster up to the connector and let the needles find "home position". Once they have found home, check to make sure that all 4 mini guages (temp, oil, volt, fuel) point in the SAME direction precisly. them check that the tach and speedo point downward in the SAME direction. The speedo should almost be pointing at the tach needle when in home position. If any of the needles are off, take the cluster back out of the truck, and pull and reinstall the offending needle. These newer style of clusters are nice because since when the truck powers down all of the needles go to "home", it makes it easier to modify the cluster without fear of setting a guage wrong.


11. You should beable to see the little changes that my mod made to my cluster. (fig. K) I like it so far, but I will be pulling it back out to install a new bezel face and new needles, plus I think I'll put a color gel behind the decal to give it a blue or red look.

Ya'll take care!

[04SilveradoMykk]

nice little write up, I've been debating how to change the backlite in the cluster of my 04' I've had my cluster apart numerous times, looking at the best way to change things up... usually once I have the needles back in place I use the OBDII scanner to watch the real time monitor data. I can make sure my Tach, Speedo, and coolant temp are accurate. For oil pressure, fuel & bat thats another story.

[CrewCabSilverad]

thats a cool mod but where do you get the gel fillers??? i was also thinking fo doing this but i was going to use see thu vinyl. thanks Anthony

[cruizerman]

You can get the gel filters in large and small sheets of 10"x10" or less at any DJ store, costume / theater tech shop or online. Just google "gel filters" and you will find them!

[CrewCabSilverad]

cool thanks for the infor ill be check around for them.

[firefighteremt3]

Great write-up. I was wondering when someone was going to do one for the newer trucks. My question though, maybe some electronics whizs can help me out. If we desolder the bulbs currently on the cluster and install LED's in place of them, do we have to worry about any voltage differences? Id like to check into some wide array LED bulbs maybe blue or something to make it look better than this crappy OEM.

[Empire01]

I've been looking everywhere for some information on this, but after reading your post, I have a few questions.

1. How bright would it be if you added one of these gel sheets.

2. You said that you can just add more lights(led's) without taking the stock lights out. How hard is this to do, and do you think it would look ok?

Thanks for taking the time to write this article, and thanks for reading this post.

[cruizerman]

Hey Empire01. The gel filters do not take much of the brightness out at all. In fact, depending on the color you choose to use, you may find that the color is deeper and more solid. Naturally, if you get a gel color like purple of deep blue, it may cut down the intensity a bit.
With the addition of LEDs, simply match the LED color you want with a matching colored gel. If you are adding red leds for example, use a red gel to help mix the light from the existing soldered-in bulbs with the LEDs.

Adding LEDs to the 03-06 cluster is not hard, because there is a large open area between the back circut board and the face of the gauges, so you can drill holes in the sides of the cluster and insert the little LEDs.

The easiest way to do the LEDs is buy them on ebay where they are already wired for 12V because each one has a wire pigtail with a soldered on resistor. All you do is hook the wires up to power and ground!

Good luck!

[Empire01]

Originally Posted by cruizerman

Hey Empire01. The gel filters do not take much of the brightness out at all. In fact, depending on the color you choose to use, you may find that the color is deeper and more solid. Naturally, if you get a gel color like purple of deep blue, it may cut down the intensity a bit.
With the addition of LEDs, simply match the LED color you want with a matching colored gel. If you are adding red leds for example, use a red gel to help mix the light from the existing soldered-in bulbs with the LEDs.

Adding LEDs to the 03-06 cluster is not hard, because there is a large open area between the back circut board and the face of the gauges, so you can drill holes in the sides of the cluster and insert the little LEDs.

The easiest way to do the LEDs is buy them on ebay where they are already wired for 12V because each one has a wire pigtail with a soldered on resistor. All you do is hook the wires up to power and ground!

Good luck!

Thanks for the quick reply. 1 more question though, if you just add the gel sheet, how would it compare (in brightness, and quality) to when you replace the lights with LED's. Do you know if there is a big difference, like, is it worth putting in extra LED's or would it be fine with just the gel sheet? Hope that makes sense, I know it's worded kinda funny.