How do I remove the needles from my gauge cluster without breaking them? I dont want to use too much force... 

 

 

They come out easy, on a pin held by rubber. The piece behind it falls and zeroing is a pain.

I will have to take a look at this tomorrow, hopefully it all goes well or it has to go back together unmodded so I can drive the car Tuesday

I already answered to your PM 92_rugby_subie but jus to let everyone else to know too it seemed to be easiest to remove the pin by pulling it with a fork of some kind. I did use a normal kitchen fork at first but found a suitable plastic interior tools to use on it. Needles should come off pretty easy with the fork but could be pretty tight too after sitting there many years.

 

What comes to making it look zero when inserted in. You can make it to show you higher than zero first and adjust it by taking it all the way to maximum and carefully twist it over it and repeat if needed. I found that to be the easiest method to adjust them.

Would you do that in car? Like zero-ing them out, just leave the plastic cover off until its all connected and then start the car and if the gauges dont read then adjust them? or just when you put the needles back on you just hold it up-right and see if they read at zero?

Well you can do it in the car too if you want to. I just marked the needle places and put them back on where they were and that's it. RPM and Speedo are easier since they are reading zero and are easy to adjust into it when off the car but all other would be advisable to check to be in right place after refitting them. It's easy to misplace the needle and it would not show you the right temperature, oil pressure, fuel amount etc.