Repainting gauge faces and needles

I was having a ride last Saturday night, and noticed that all the gauges on my XJ are bright yellow with the lights on, and a bit distracting. The gauge faces have faded, probably from the PO leaving the bike too long in the bright sun. Also, the gauge needles have faded to white. I want to keep to keep the stock cluster as it has everything I want to know: fuel and time.

Has anyone tried repainting the gauge faces? I was thinking about using a rattle can of matt black, although masking off all the tiny numbers will be a very fiddly job. I've done a search around the forums and haven't found any write ups.

I have found gauge needle paint in fluro red or orange. Should this be a matt finish or gloss?

Photo is not very good. My camera phone does not have a flash.

 

Some Yamaha gauges had white needles; I have an electronic tach that I believe came from an FJ600, same "styling" as yours, and it has a white needle.

That being said, feel free to repaint them. The needle paint is matte finish. Just be sure it goes on smooth and thin.

They're showing yellow at night because the gauges were printed on a translucent yellow plastic to begin with. The effect can be mitigated to some extent by installing superbright 5-element LEDs as instrument lamps.

I've had better luck using a diluted soap-based degreaser (Simple Green) to clean the faces, and live with the fading on the redline area in the tach.

 

Thanks bigfitz. I'm not sure if all the gauge needles were originally white or not. The fuel gauge needle still has some orange/red paint at the base of the needle, where it is covered by the clock panel, the rest of the needle is white. I probably will repaint them as the orange would be easier to see at night over the dash lights.

 

For my '83, where I wasn't concerned about 100% original appearance, I painted them all bright orange to match; speedo, tach, fuel and voltmeter.

Along with the LED cluster lights, it's a 100% improvement.