A simple effective cure was offered days ago. Yet this thread continues on and on...
NT
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9 years ago
Disappearing needles.
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9 years ago
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Thought I'd answered that. No they don't. /q
Well you kind of brushed it off in a dismissive way, that implies you didn't actually bother as you couldn't accept it as a possible explanation to your 'insoluble' problem:-)
Jim K
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9 years ago
Dunno if it's well known. But it's not unique to my car. The degree may vary - difficult to tell through pics.
Crikey. After all this time you seem to have got the point. Here's my original post:-
From: Dave Plowman (News) Subject: Disappearing needles. Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 19:10 Newsgroups: uk.d-i-y
The instrument needles on my old Rover disappear at night. They are white during the day and show up ok - but at night with the green lighting all but vanish. I presume they have some form of luminous paint which has failed?
Luckily, it's pretty easy to get at them to re-paint. What would be the best stuff to use?
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9 years ago
You've told me nothing I don't already know.
I'd hope the needle was in a different plane to the scale. Would have problems moving if it wasn't.
The fixed markings are backlit. Do you know what this means? The light source is on the back of the face which is matt back and allows no light through - apart from via the numerals. And spill round the edges.
Dunno about on your planet, but here a decent bench power supply gives electricity rather similar to a battery.
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9 years ago
Your idea of fitting LEDs on the front of the meter or to the needle itself?
Dismissed out of hand.
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9 years ago
Potential pitfall is they are retroreflective paints, light gets bounced back straight the way it came, think of a snooker table that bounced the ball back at you rather than off at an angle.
Guessing the numerals are actually backlit, there does seem to be soemthing special about the needles though.
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9 years ago
With a 30 year old car it could be either - or even just simple aging. And when you ask a question on the club forum, people aren't obliged to reply. Or may not even have noticed.
Given it's taken a very long time for this fault to become apparent - and BL ceased to exist some 10 years ago, I'll not hold my breath for a factory fix.
They're not invisible. Merely dimmer than the numerals. Making the instruments harder to read than they should be. And once were.
Since the dials are plastic and the needles likely aluminium, it's very possible different paints were used. Especially since the dials are printed in some way.
Think you mean dim. Since you have dimmers on the brain. No matter how ridiculous your theory is.
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9 years ago
************* From: Dave Plowman (News) Subject: Re: Disappearing needles. Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 11:00 Newsgroups: uk.d-i-y
The dial faces are clear plastic with white on black lettering. So the numerals are white in daylight, but have green lighting from behind at night.
*************Thought even you might understand that - even if the pictures were way above your comprehension.
Oh - like a dimmer, you mean? It's already got one of those which functions perfectly.
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9 years ago
What you actually mean is you didn't read my earlier posts carefully.
What you actually mean is you didn't read my earlier posts carefully.
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9 years ago
Think everyone on here knows you lie through your teeth, but let me remind you of your first post on this tread:-
**************From: Rod Speed Subject: Re: Disappearing needles. Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 01:00 Newsgroups: uk.d-i-y
But neither of those is very likely with the most recent detail of the visibility of the needle degrading over time and not just visible or not.
******************Which shows you weren't replying to my first post.
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9 years ago
well the needles are not lit directly by a bulb and it cant be a luminescent paint on them so must be
a retroreflective paint.
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9 years ago
Don't know if this gives a clue, but was driving tonight while it got dark. When first switching on the lights, the numerals were pretty obviously green due to the backlight - but the needles still visible as a (dull) white. As it got darker, they gradually disappeared. All very odd.
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9 years ago
or they are lit indirectly by the bulb.
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9 years ago
Or the luminescence is activated by daylight and quickly wears off!
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9 years ago
If its conventional filament bulbs in the instrument cluster then in my experience they tend to go black rather than failing dead. (the filament gets deposited on the glass envelope). It may depend on which part of bulb is illuminating the needles and or the remaining intensity of the bulbs if thyn have blackened.
On my car I can turn down the cluster illumination and one of the effects when turning it down to near minimum is that I cannot see the needles at night but the numbers on the dials are OK.
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9 years ago
You sometimes see white/grey areas on filament bulbs.
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9 years ago
Obviously I can't look at any of those particular bulbs at the moment, but none of the ones on the spare unit exhibit this effect - nor have I ever seen it on such low power bulbs - they're only 1.2 watt and have a very large filament.
Makes no difference to the relative intensity here between them from full up to fully dimmed.
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9 years ago
Reflective mebbe, retroreflective is a specifc effect, street sign dosent look brighter illuminated by headlights off angle.
Thing with photoluminscent is Strontium Aluminate didn`t exist until early 2000`s was the much shorter glow zinc sulphide, and there is no white photoluminescents they`re green through low intensity blue to a very short glow red.