Somewhere ?? I read an account by someone ?? that described a process for removing
the chrome rings around the 'meters without cutting them. I am entertaining the
possibility of buying two of the replacement disk faces from one of those listed on
Ebay. I also need to clean the inside of the plastic lenses to remove 35 years of
gunk.
It would be nice to do this and put the clamps back on intact. Has anyone done
this....and if so how did the replacements look? 
Jim
Yes I have done this. I've used both the cut ring method and the pry method and prefer the pry method. However, I use a jig to stabilize the gauge when prying the ring from the backside of the gauge. The jig is made of delrin and was made by a machinist friend. When putting them back together I use a homemade tool and a small hammer to peen the ring back on (while it's in the jig). Unless you see the gauge from the back you cannot tell that it was taken apart.
Once you have the gauge apart remove the two screws holding the face on. This way you can use two flat bladed screwdrivers to pry the needle up from the gauge. Never pry with any tool using the gauge face as a support. Using two screwdrivers you apply even upward pressure from opposite sides and won't break the needle shaft.
Now that the needles are off, take the gauge faces and strip the paint using acetone. It will not harm the plastic. If the faces are warped they can be straightened. Use a breadpan and place a sheet of aluminum foil in the bottom. Next place the faces on the aluminum foil next to each other then place another sheet of aluminum foil over the faces. Now place a brick over the faces (the breadpan must be big enough to hold a standard brick). Preheat your oven to 200 degrees F and no more. Place the dish in the oven on the middle rack. After an hour turn the oven off. After about 12 hours or so remove from the oven. The faces will be straight.
If you are using the instrument appliques from "roberth9" then you will want to paint the faces white (satin sheen or semi gloss). If you are using the gauge faces from "kawa_triple" then don't paint the faces at all. Now install the appliques/gauge faces. Next, paint the tips of the needles red. I have used both types of overlays and prefer the ones from "kawa_triple" as they are much easier to apply to the gauge faces. The drawback to the ones from "kawa_triple" is that he only offers them for the K0-K2's.
While I have the gauges apart there are several things I do. I remove the mechanism from the rear gauge case and clean the rear gauge case in an ultrasonic cleaner. I repaint the outer bezels black and the inner bezels white. The gasket that holds the glass is cleaned then a rubber/vinyl preservative is applied. The glass lenses are also cleaned in the ultrasonic cleaner. I check the needle posts for lubrication with a 4x watchmaker's loupe (and fortuneately I've found plenty of lube on all the gauges I've redone). A very small amount of lithium grease is applied to the odometer gears (very small!). On the K0-K2 gauges I take apart the gearboxes, clean all parts and repack with lithium grease.
On my first set of gauges I found that the center of the lenses would fog after a few minutes. Since then I use an anti-fog from RainX and have had no fogging problems since.
When putting the gauges back together discard the rubber gasket that you found attached to the edge of the inner bezel (the one that goes between the outer bezel and the bottom gauge case). You cannot create enough pressure to compress this gasket and get the ring peened back down over the case back properly.
As you can see, this is quite an involved process. But for some sick reason I enjoy doing it. Here's some pics of my CB 750 gauges. The green ones are on the K2 and are the overlays from "kawa_triple" while the white ones are from "roberth9".
