Inturment Gauge Ring removal
 

Does anyone know if the rings can be removed in order to paint rather than masking around the cluster in order to paint the rings?

Id say a hacksaw would remove those rings pretty quick, lol. But id get strips of tape (clear packing tape, or masking tape, or something) and make a sheet out of it on wax paper, get a compass and make perfect circles and cut them out and apply. Be creative!

Too slow junior... Heres a picture of my awesome mask job

Here it is all done.

The "rings" of which you speak are a molded part of the face of the cluster and cannot be removed. The silver painted aluminum rings you see on eBay are glued over the factory plastic rings.

Here's a link to a page on my site where you can see how it's assembled and how to take it apart.

http://www.iwantaporsche.net/cluster.htm

While it's much cheaper to remove the cluster and mask off the whole thing and paint the plastic gauge surrounds, a much nicer look would be the aluminum rings.

So my recommendation is that you buy some rings off eBay as I did and CAREFULLY superglue them to your cluster with it fully removed from your car. You must use a small amount of thick super glue and be patient while it dries (which is a long time because it's plastic and aluminum and doesn't adhere as quickly as say, two plastic parts would). The best way to do it is to put the cluster face down and then apply the superglue to the inside of the center ring, then bring the center ring upward to the cluster and hold it there until it's dry. Then repeat the process with the left and right rings.

You may also want to swap out the gauge faces while the cluster is out. This, of course, is not a lot more work if you get the needles back in the right position...don't get me started on how frustrating and time consuming that was for me!

Yours is much neater than mine ;)

http://i14.tinypic.com/35k7p0g.jpg

Oh dude, I hope that's a dead cluster you tore down to tinker with :eek:

If it didn't start out dead it soon will be...! heh!

It's a spare... part of a project.

I'm a little neater.

Well i finished my project by masking everything, Take a look at my post up above, It looks alot like the one you pictured but mine is alittle more shiney than that.

Looks like your tring to get some 996 gauges into your boxster, hows that coming along?