I was looking for pictures of the dash and stumbled across this thread. This is exactly what I'm working on right now as well. Too funny!
I took apart my Shift-i. The LED's are mounted directly to the PCB. I decided not to mess with them, but maybe you are more brave! Instead I am going to hack up a used binnacle cover and somehow try to integrate the whole unit into the cowl.
Maybe we can bounce ideas off each other.
Here's a link to my thread.
New Project - Shift-i Integrated into Binnacle
Jonathan