One of the things that I noticed right away on Honda's Nighthawk - seems like specifically from the mid-80s, was that you can pretty much count on one or more gauge needles broken off.
I am just absolutely dying to understand why that would be. Surely someone here knows. I have instrument clusters from the early 70's that have perfectly intact gauges, have seen dozens of 40+ year old instrument clusters with perfectly intact needles - discolored from the sun sure, but not broken off.
First, why would a needle break anyway - it's not under any real strain unless you count bouncing off the stop pin. Yet, of the half-dozen or so instrument clusters I've seen for the Nighthawk - none of them were totally intact. One of them had at least a needle bent down on the thin edge of breaking off. One had ALL 4 of the gauge needles broken - even the fuel gauge that barely moves.
Did the Japanese use particularly crummy plastic back then or something?
