Installed El-Glo instrument cluster photos

[Andrew <aos+yahoo@xxxx>]

I've finally gotten the El-Glo electroluminscent instrument cluster from 
Ryan Gould (http://www.deloreanautomotive.com/) installed, and I took a 
bunch of photos, several of which almost look decent.

I opted for the Eurostyle font, reverse El-Glo (i.e. dark background, lit 
lettering), White "Cobalt blue" font (which glows a nice, deep blue 
similar to the newer VW instrument clusters). Note that this isn't the 
same color as the normal white color, which glows a much lighter blue. We 
originally had a mixup over this, and Ryan was very helpful about getting 
things sorted out. I can't say enough good things about him.

While Ryan's kits include red 194 bulbs to replace the regular instrument 
cluster bulbs, I really want lit needles, so my plan was to replace the 
instrument cluster bulbs with UV LEDs and to paint the needles on the 
gauges with a UV-reactive paint. I tried this out, and found that the UV 
LEDs, from the distance and orientation they're in in relation to the 
gauge faces, didn't cause the needles to fluoresce one bit, so I've 
shelved this idea at least temporarily. I may try a cold cathode tube 
later, which will produce a lot more UV, or I may even try butchering the 
cluster from a car with real lit needles and kludging them into the DMC 
cluster somehow. I haven't given up yet!

Anyway, I took a bunch of pictures of the failed UV painting procedure and 
the finished product (alas, with Ryan's provided red bulbs), and it really 
looks great. The pictures are up at:

http://artifact.psychedelic.net/~aos/photos/?album=dmc-ElGlo

The finished product looks better than I expected, and I'm really pleased. 
I'm going to keep working on real lit needles, but I know I won't be 
disappointed with this in the meantime.

If any of you are on the fence about doing this project, I really 
recommend it. It's given my car a whole new look at night.

-andrew
#4115
Houston TX