[CrashLotus]

Maybe those 3 nuts securing the upper right connector are actually retaining the whole PCB assy in the housing?

I already fell for that once... removed the 2 from the central connector to discover the bolts on the other side aren't held in place with anything. They fell inside. I managed to shake them out, but there's no way to reattach them.
I believe it's the needles themselves holding the thing in place.

 

[CrashLotus]

I took a thin blade and cut the rubber seal holding the clear front on, then removed needles by pulling them off. There are threads on here, even including options to change the colors. Now that I have a radio with blue illumination, I wish I had changed dash illumination.

I haven't tried it yet, but this gave me the idea to search for the needle replacement, and I found this:

[Instrument Cluster Modification] A brief guide to...

I've received lots of questions regarding how to do the needle/ LCD display mod. There's a thread a while back that was started by riceburner, aka Bob. He contributes a lot of time and effort to make this happen. I have to give him tons of credit for it. In this thread, I will briefly go thru...

www.lotustalk.com

Thanks!

 

[CrashLotus]

Update: I managed to get it apart without breaking it.
The tach needle came out easily, but I just could not get the speedometer needle to let go. So I flipped it back over and pulled straight up on the PCB holding onto the offending 12-pin connector. That worked, and the needle came free. Didn't see any visual issues with the solder joints, but I re-soldered the 3 pins anyway. Reassembled, and so far, it's working.