Dim cluster illumination at night
 

The night lighting of my '88 944 instrument cluster is pretty dim. Is that a function of worn out bulbs? I've got the cluster out and I've noticed that the plastic light pipes that direct the light from the illumination bulbs to the front of the instruments has a lot of the mirroring rubbed off of it. Can that be restored with silver spray paint or something? Any suggestions out there from anyone? I was thinking about replacing most of the bulbs in the cluster while I have it out anyway. I've seen some aftermarket LED kits for 944's that look interesting - anyone tried one of those?

RE: Dim cluster illumination at night
 

That is a very easy fix. Take non-acetone nail polish remover and scrub off the remaining silver reflective surface on the 3 pods. Once it is clean, tape down some tin foil over the pods. Don't bother trying to paint it, the tin foil works great, and the paint doesn't. Then replace all the bulbs as well (clark fletcher has the bulbs listed in his shop manual, I can't remember off the top of my head exactly what they are....maybe 194's). Then reinstall the cluster and your lights will be nice and bright. Clark has a procedure for this on his website.

www.clarks-garage.com go to his garage shop manual.

RE: Dim cluster illumination at night
 

Awesome - I'm not sure how I missed that on Clark's shop manual page - information overload, I guess. Looks like if I want to spend the $$ I can get a replacement lens assembly as well, but I'm going to try the cheaper route first.

Thanks for the input!

RE: Dim cluster illumination at night
 

I did the fix to mine 3 years ago, and I still have the brightness turned down a notch. It is actually quite bright when everything is working as it should :)