Anyway to open Beede gauges to replace cracked glass?

[pclausen]

I got 5 802As. Some are runners and some are parts. Some have working gauges that are cracked and others have intact glass but the gauge isn't working.

Is there a way to remove the front glass bezel from one gauge and put it on another? Maybe heat up that black surround?

 

[Guyfang]

I tried a number of times. Never had any luck.

 

[Ray70]

I've done it a few times before. The bezel is an aluminum ring crimped around the edge to secure it to the white plastic body.
From the back side, take a very small screwdriver and get between the edge of the bezel and the white plastic body of the gage.
Twist the screwdriver to bend the crimped edge up and away from the white body. Work your way all the way around in tiny increments, eventually the entire lip will be 90* to the face of the gage and the bezel and glass will simply come off the body.
To put it back I put the gage face down on a table with a cloth to prevent scratching the black bezel.
Use a very small hammer to lightly tap the lifted bezel edge back down, rolling the edge you lifted back down again, working your way around the gage.
You will now have it back together and just a little satin black paint or black sharpie will tough up the small nick marks ( if you even care ) on the back side where the screwdriver scraped off the black anodizing, not that you can see it once installed anyway!

 

[pclausen]

I'll be damned. That worked:



I have a 803 (2000 vintage) I just picked up that came with 3 gauges that have blue housing like the fuel gauge above. They have no logo on the dial face. Any idea who made those?

I stole 3 nice Beede gauges out of a spare 802 and put those in my 803:



I plan to also replace those 2000 vintage electrical gauges with the clear lover section with the ones with a black lover section like my newer 2009 vintage 802s:



Thanks again for the trick on how to swap out face glass on these!

 

[Ray70]

Anytime! Glad it worked.
Looks like some of yours may have met the same demise as I did once.
I was working on an 802 outdoors and didn't latch the control panel closed.
We had a wind/rain storm that night, the wind blew the control panel open, rain got into those blue body gages ( because of the missing illumination bulbs and were also missing the red block-off plugs ) then it got frigid cold, the water froze and cracked all 3 gages, pushing the glass outward.
I didn't have spare glass lenses so I removed the bezel and cut discs from a sheet of Lexan.