I ordered the HiPo white fluorescent paint but I have not attempted to paint the numbers for exactly the reason you described. I went to the craft store and bought some extremely fine artists brushes, 0000 or finer I believe. I think the HiPo paint is a bit thick and gobby so I am going to thin it first next time and apply multiple coats, allowing it to fully dry in between. When it comes to the numbers and tic marks this will be ~very tedious work, but you have confirmed my concern that they would not "glow" like the re-painted needles. I will try it on some junk gauges first, but hopefully it will work with a steady hand and lots of patience.

 

Sometimes people use foam brushes that won't go down the sides to paint raised things like the letters and tick marks.

 

Yep mine seemed to be quite thin after shaking mine for a good 5 minutes straight. The brush would spread one layer fine but when you let it dry and brush second layer it would soften up the first layer and wipe it off. Was very thin in my book.

I don't need my numbers to glow as I can see with the LED bulbs but would be nice for them to glow like my needles do but not something I want to attempt without some trial and error. I do have a old tach face from a '80-'86 Ford truck (tach was bad ended up installing aftermarket tack in its place) that I can use as a test piece.

 

I was almost thinking of trying those blunt tipped toothpicks. Take and get a glob of paint and dab it on slowly.

 

Yeah I brushed it on with a fine hair brush, looks great.

 

I wound up pulling the instrument panel on Big Blue today, and have decided now is the time to paint the needles. So I ordered HiPo's orange and red as well as Testor's fluorescent orange paints. I'll use the HiPo orange on Big Blue, but I'll have all three with which to do the testing we've outlined.

Stay tuned.....

 

Any photo updates on this, Gary?

BTW - I'm another of the Testors Fluorescent Orange users [airbrushed] and love the look.

 

I have painted the gauges on Big Blue with Testor's Fluorescent Orange. I painted it straight from the bottle with a really small nylon brush and got excellent results. With an hour of drying time between coats the next coat went on as smoothly as the first, so there wasn't the lumpy buildup that I've gotten with HiPo paints. In fact, I don't see a need to go to use an air brush with Testor's.

But, you asked for pics. The one below is the best I've gotten, but even it doesn't do justice to the needles. They are brilliant orange to the eye and give the gauges a "fresh" look.

As you can see in the pic, the color is pretty close to what is left of the original paint, which I left exposed at the bottom of the needle. However, I do not know that the color of the original hasn't changed from what it was new.




I still plan to do the full comparison of Testor's and the two HiPo paints with NOS gauges that have never seen the light of day. However, I've already learned several things about viewing pictures of gauges online that make me somewhat cautious. First, what the camera captures is not what the eye sees. I took shots in my shop with my pretty decent Nikon D7100 DSLR on auto-white balance and then showed the pics on my monitor while holding the gauge next to the pic and the colors weren't right. Then I set the white balance to fluorescent and they were different but still not right.

The shot above was taken outside on a cloudy day with white balance set to Cloudy, and the color is pretty good. But the brilliance is just not there when compared to the real thing. The needle just doesn't "pop" as it does in real life.

And then there's the issue of the view's monitor vs mine. In one case I photoshopped a picture to get the image on my screen to pretty well match the gauge that I had in my hand. But when I posted the pic Rick/Lariat85 came back saying that was exactly the color he got when using HiPo's red. However, I had a bottle of HiPo red laying right next to the gauge and they weren't close in color. I'm not saying Rick's monitor is bad or wrong, but just that it is different than mine.

So, I say all of that to say that I'm quite sure what you see on your screen will not be what my eye sees in real life. I can't even get my own screen to show that, and every screen is different. But, I think it will be fair to compare NOS to the three paints. Let's see what I can do.

 

Ok, I created a web page to display the pictures I took today: Painting Gauge Needles - ???Gary's Garagemahal. But, let me say up front that looking at the gauges and the paint swatches with my eye in daylight and looking at the pictures on a computer screen leads me to two different conclusions. In real life the Testor's paint wins, but on this screen HiPo Orange wins. Don't ask why. But, I'll believe my eyes.

Having said that, I'd like suggestions, comments, positive criticism, etc.

 

That's awesome Gary! Thank you for putting the time and effort into those tests and imaging. It seems like the Testor's is the clear winner at least with respect to application and finish. Is the Testor's oil based (I presume) vs. water based for the HiPo? How is the sheen of the Testor's when dried? How is the sheen of the NOS needles?

 

Thanks, Jonathan.

I think all three paints are oil-based. I cleaned the brush with lacquer thinner, and it worked well.

As for sheen, the NOS needles are flat and all three paints are as well.

Perhaps this info needs to be on the web page. Anything else you can think of? Any corrections?

 

Nicely done, as usual, Gary! My preference is the orange spectrum. You mentioned that the NOS gauges vary some in color. On my truck, the original tachometer needle faded considerably more than did the rest even though exposed to the same conditions, so apparently, not only might the needle color have varied when new, but the fade characteristics might also be different.

 

Thanks, David. You guys can see the NOS gauges when you come for the GTG, and we can compare to Big Blue's gauges which were done with Testor's.

I'm guessing that the different vendors used different paint, and it faded more/less than others. On Big Blue the ammeter needle was faded to white all the way down the needle, while the others had a bit of color left at the bottom of the needle where it was protected by the "mask" over the gauges. So there must have been a difference in sensitivity to light, and probably UV rather than IR.

 

I would put my money on just that.


When I did my AMC Javelin gauges IIRC I used testers spray on it as I do not have an air brush and to dig out brush & thinners was too much like work
After cleaning, painting and LED bulbs I went with after market gauges
Dave ----

 

As easily as the Testors goes on with a brush I don't see the need to air brush. But the HiPo paints could use some thinning or air brushing as they don't lay down smoothly right out of the bottle.