I won a carbon fiber gauge bezel on ebay recently for about $30. It took a while for it to get to me, but I finally got it last night. It looks really nice IMO, definitely worth it.


I recently added an idiot light to my dash in the blank spot in the upper right next to the security light. I took the panel from a junked Stanza and cut and put a part of it in my current one and put a light behind it. Here are the instructions from my webpage so it wont overload my geocities account right now


For pics of everything, go here
http://craigbrace.homestead.com/files/gauges

: On the gauge "idiot"/warning lights, there was a blank spot on the upper
: right portion of my lights. Depending on what options your car has, there
: may be more. I decided to put another light in that spot.
: Once the gauges are removed (if you want instructions for that, check out my
: <A href="http://www.geocities.com/craigbracegt/maxima/clock/clock.html">
: clock repair page</a>), the plastic cover pops off with a few tabs. On
: the backside of the cover, the gauge light covers just pop out also.
: Originally, I just cut out a oval shape like the rest of teh lights and put a
: LED behind it. Then I covered the hole with some scotch tape painted black.
: I then drilled a hole coming down from the top of the gauge housing for the LED to
: go through and for the wires. I didn't want to drill through the backside because of
: the circuit board on there.
: This worked all right but didn't produce much light. The stock cover could be scraped
: away to make it translucent, but it didn't turn out very clean when I tried that.
: I went to a pull-a-part junkyard a little later and found a 91 Stanza. The interiors
: of the late-model Stanzas (before they turned into Sentras) are pretty similar to the
: 3rd gen Maxima. I took apart the gauge cluster and pulled out the light cover from
: it and also a few of the bulbs behind it. I cut a small square out of the Stanza cover
: around an orange light; then I cut the blank spot out of mine. I put the new one in its
: place and used some hot glue around the edges on the back side and put a very small amount
: of painted tape on the front to prevent light from coming through the cracks.
: This turned out very well. Unless you put your face a few inches away from the gauges
: you can't tell a difference. The light is very clean and bright. It's looks just like
: any of the other lights (ABS, brake, security, etc). The last pic shown
: below was taken at midday with lots of sunlight and it is even brighter at night.
: Right now I am just using it as a test light. It has 2 leads coming from it that I can
: attach to anything and if it gets one power and one ground, it will come on. This is very
: useful for diagnosing things where the car needs to be moving (I'm fixing my cruise control).
: I'm not sure what I'll end up hooking it up to. I am considering a small shift light
: and just hooking the shiftlight to this light instead, but I'm shifting just fine
: without one so I dont know about that. Any suggestions would be welcome!
: Here are some pics of the different stages of it. This wasn't all that hard to do,
: but just requires some patience. And dont come complaining to me when you screw up your
: gauges .

 

Hey i think that looks sweet, do you got the carbon fiber kit as well? I think i might pick that up maybe for christmas or somthing.

 

yeah, I've had the Joshua Tree carbon fiber dash since last xmas (www.woodtrim.com). I really like both of them; I think they look really nice. It's hard to tell exactly how they look in pictures but they pick up the light really well.
I hadn't seen the gauge bezel before until a few weeks ago on ebay so I picked it up for $30 or so

check out http://maxima.cardomain.com/id/craigbrace for pics of the rest of the dash before the bezel and my other mod list

 

in case you miss my post on the other board...do you think you can hook me up with his username or email. i want to see if he has a brushed aluminum bezel before i go and make my own