Sorry for bumping this old thread, but I found a great trick that could help people that legitimately need to remove the needle. *Some people might prefer the brute force with a fork method but I like this better.
Simple: the headlight opening trick at a lower temperature.
Remove the odometer/speedometer unit from the rest of the cluster and pull the little circuit board off the back. There are four screws then it just pops off and should look like this:
Put the unit on a baking sheet covered with aluminum foil and toss it in the oven (NOT preheated). I set it as low as it would go which was 170°F.
I was just winging it and didn't really monitor the time in there, but I removed it once the thermostat read 140°F.
Be REALLY careful with this! Mine still works and nothing is melted but you never know, 141 could be 1 degree too much
. Basically it was just a little too hot to hold for a long time when I took it out.
After it's out of the oven quickly get a fork and carefully wedge it under the needle. Give it a good pull and it should pop off! You should have this:
I've tried to remove the needle on my old cluster and it wouldn't budge for sh*t! This just took a firm pull which I was much more comfortable with... even though I essentially baked my odometer and it smells like last nights chicken cacciatore
.
Edit: I forgot about realigning it! Apparently the speedometer will calibrate itself at 0 with the car turned on, so you might be able to just push it on then. I actually used a GPS speedometer app (Speedview, android) and pushed the needle back on
lightly at 30. Test it at a few different speeds to make sure it doesn't read fast or slow. Voilà!