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Soooo... I will NEVER be doing that again!!!

I told my girl that I had seen something about changing the color of the LEDs in a speedo cluster. So.. she wanted it pink. I went ahead and ordered the little LEDs.

When the stupid little lights were shipped to me. I took one look and said to myself. "I should take this to a TV repair shop or something and let them do it."

Then, I decided to read the directions. The directions made it seem easy enough. So... I took a little bit of my abundance of ego, and decided that I could do it!!!!

So... I took off the cluster,then dismantling it. I thought.. well... it looks as easy as the directions said. I pulled the needle and the removed the RPM face plate... "all is going well".

At this point... I should have taken a second to google search the experiences with the R6 clusters.

As I tug, pull and pry on the LCD screen. I am thinking "I am doing it wrong". So I bust out the butter knife, to get under the edge and trying to convence it up. As the directions supplied, show a guy pulling it off with his fingers and saying "be careful not to break it."

Then I get it about half way up and notice they are not pins that can be pulled out like the directions implies. I thought there might be some sort of male female connection in the middle but I was sadly mistaken. Looking at the bottom of the screen... I see these little prongs. "Oh... maybe that is where they come apart."

Prying and pulling at them. I remove 15 breaking 4 or them in the process. "You have got to be ****ing KIDDING!"

After having destroyed the LCD screen. I went downstairs to the garage and got another cluster. This time I desoldered the damn thing and put it aside. Mind you... there are 28 pins in the back of this screen... so I sat there for almost an hour taking the damn thing off.

Then I remove all of the LEDs only to find out that they are polar specific. So... Which way did they go!?!? Lucky I had the other one to look at. As I melted one of the LEDs, (thank god there were extras) I though to myself... "This shit sucks!"

After about the 6th LED I started to get the hang of it and it moved along quickly. but not before I wasn't paying attention and melted one of the buttons with the iron.

Anyways, I get them all in and put the screen back on. Another hour of lining up 28 ****ing tiny ass pins to slide them back into the board. I finally get it back in and pull the switch from the other cluster to replace it. Time to go down to plug it in to see how it looks.

I turn the bike on and everything works... except now the very last number on the trip and ODO is constantly an 8 and the lights aren't that bright. Then my girl looks over and says "They are pink!.. ish purple"

So... just to recap
3.5 hours of work
I burned myself 5 times with the iron
I burned my girl 2 times
I destroyed 2 guage clusters to make 1
The LEDs were not that bright
I have 1 of the numbers that are always on
and they are not really "pink" they are Pinkish purple.

In conclusion... I will NEVER be doing this again!