[ls1nova71]

It's absolutely imperative that you install the needle with the speedometer powered up. You likely won't see the shaft of the motor move since it's small and the movement isn't a lot at times. Even if it was at zero powered off, just the act of installing the needle could move it enough for the needle to be off by a bit. Also, when installing it powered up, there's a chance you won't get it right on the first try, so it takes some trial and error to get it perfect.

As for painting the needle, for some reason it doesn't always matter how dry the paint is, it can still stick to the little needle stop if there's paint on the needle at that spot, because the stepper motors don't have enough power to overcome it even it is only slightly stuck. What I do is carefully take a razor blade and scrape the paint off the needle at that spot so it can't stick to it.