Painted my needle bases silver

[girth]

Nothing major, I've just always liked the 3.5 MSP silver needle base more than the regular Protege black - especially with DaveB rings. I'm happy with how they turned out. A nice, cheap mod.

 

[kNOWfREED0m]

looks very clean and nice, good job!

 

[RyanJayG]

looks good.... very nice....

 

[jersey_emt]

Looks great! I have the same setup (the silver needle bases, with the Dave B brushed rings)

 

[dominoy2k1]

they look pretty cool

 

[girth]

Thanks guys! Came with the added benefit of finally getting a chance to put some sound deadening material around the gauge plastic housing too. Hopefully that will calm down some of the rattles from the AWR mounts.

 

[black_rob00]

Looks good. Was it hard to take the needles off?

 

[SNike05]

same question as ^^^. I want to get a custom overlay but I have to remove the needles. How hard is it to remove and put back the needles?

 

[RyanJayG]

you could always paint them whie still installed and use a model brush and paint

 

[girth]

Yup, I did as RyanJayG said and painted them without removing them. I had heard it's not easy to remove the needles, so I didn't. I thought there was a how-to on removing the needles though floating around here somewhere........not sure.

 

[SNike05]

Yup, I did as RyanJayG said and painted them without removing them. I had heard it's not easy to remove the needles, so I didn't. I thought there was a how-to on removing the needles though floating around here somewhere........not sure.

thanks

 

[protegeV]

dizzam, that looks hoTT...very good job(thumb)

 

[FunkyBuddha]

Looks good man

 

[p5sundevil]

yah mine need to be redone, did em about 5-6 months ago and for some reason it looks like they changed color a little. gonna redo it with different paint.

yours came out really nice, matched up real well to the rings and got s amsooth finish which is hard to do since that plastic is actually kinda rough.

 

[PMPJUICE25]

How Did You Do That It Looks Real Good?

 

[girth]

How Did You Do That It Looks Real Good?

ARGH! I had a whole long reply typed up but apparently took to long and the damn thing logged me out and then I lost my entire reply. *sigh*....let me summarize what I was going to say:

I just used 1oz silver model paint ("Testors" brand) from Wal-Mart and a small model paint brush from Wal-Mart. About $3 total. The hardest part is like p5sundevil mentioned - getting a smooth finish. The silver paint that I used had a tendancy to separate out the "glittery" part and "oily" part; so when I first started by putting on a thin coat, the small needles looked good but the big ones looked like crap - they had funny looking streaks in them. At that point I figured what the hell and let the thin coat dry, then proceeded to put on a THICK coat of the stuff - almost to the point where it was like a water droplet where the surface tension kind of automatically smoothed it out. The only downside to that is that it takes a LONG time to dry then and is a little messier. I let it sit for at least 9 hours and it still wasn't completely dry, but I couldn't wait any longer so I put everything back together and reinstalled it. So far all is well - the needle hubs are REALLY shiny now - it almost looks like chrome in person.

It'll be interesting to see how they hold up to the summer heat and winter cold. Hopefully they won't darken like p5sundevil's did. Hey P5sundevil, I'd like to see a pic of yours now that they've darkened - post one in this thread if you can.

If you like the way they look it's definitely something you can do on your own - just make sure you allocate enough time for it. Go slow, put down paper on the gauges to catch the drips, and give yourself at least 1 day to do it. If anybody else does their's post a pic - I'd like to see it!

 

[srtchick]

Nice looks very clean (thumb)

 

[Pretzellogic]

I love cheap mods that look good.

 

[Mp5speed]

That will definitely be yet another summer project for my baby.

 

[Mp5speed]

God I love my Protege 5. I dont think I will love another car the same.