OK, so here is an incomplete photo essay on my gauge rebuilding experience. I have no before pictures, but I'm sure you have seen old, tired, and crusty gauges. I started by removing the chrome backs and the rubber ring that the clamps go around to hold the guages. This gave me access to the retaining rings. I started with a very small screwdriver and began to pry the bottom of the ring away from the housing....unfortunately, I did not take any of this. I kept working around and switched to a larger screwdriver until I could separate the black housing from the back. There is a blue/green inner housing inside the black one....I separated these also
First photo is the inner housings after separating them from the outer black housing.....really rusty and crusty.
the same housing repainted with the closest color I could find at the local Hardware store.
I don't have a before picture of the outer housings, but one of them was bent up. I used a kitchen spoon and worked the dents out as well as I could. Then I bead blasted and powdercoated them.
I saw this nifty trick on getting the needles off. It works great.
One of my guages had the typical broken light reflector
So I glued it with epoxy and reinforced with a nail with the head cut off (arrow A) Disregard B and C as they were for another post on this forum.
I bought new faces from EBay and painted my needles
Now it is time to refit the rings to the housing. I tried to figure out a way to reseat the rings without marring them up. So.....after thinking about it I took a little trip to the local building supply store and picked up a 2 foot section of 4 inch pvc pipe and an end piece that had the perfect 4 inch inside diameter, which is the same at the outside diameter of the gauge. The 2 foot length allowed me to sit in a chair and set the pipe on the floor and turn the pipe as I worked my way around. I did have to grind 1/2 inch of the threads off the pipe so I could fit a hose clamp around the guage ring. I used the hose clamp to help the ring maintain its shape.
Then I used and aluminum drift and gently tapped the ring down around the housing. I went around twice, and rotated the clamp when I got to the area of the screw tightener because it did not press up tight to the ring in that area.
The ring seated and the hose clamp removed
The finished product