I took the needles off and reweighted them as you suggest. I used some lead tape that is designed for adjusting the swingweight of golf clubs, basically a lead strip with a sticky back. The key to installation is, I think, to leave the smoked cover off of the cluster, install it, adjust the needles to the correct positions, drive around to make sure everything is aligned, and then install the smoked cover and cluster bezel.
I used four red 60mcd SMT 1206 LEDs on the long needles and three on the short, mounted on strips of copper-clad circuit board cutr from a Radio Shack breadboard. I used a single SMT resistor -- 150 and 270 OHM, I think. Here's a good calculator for the circuit -- http://www.hebeiltd.com.cn/?p=zz.led.resistor.calculator
I'll post pictures tomorrow. The needles are little funky looking. I expected the translucent slits in the needles to disperse the light more evenly.
If I were to do it again, I would try to find an SMT LED with a voltage drop closer to 1V rather than the 1206's 2-2.2V. That would allow a chain of ten or so of them to be used in the long needles. The other option would be to find a smaller SMT package with a lower current that would fit horizontally in the needle, and run the LEDs in parallel instead of serially. Basically, recreate the original lighting. I would also like to see what it would look like to turn the LEDs to face downward so that the needles are backlit.
I now have an additional cluster and plenty of raw materials, so maybe I'll experiment.
JM