on some clusters it's literally impossible to remove the needle... remember that 240sx cluster I mentioned with the broken needle return spring in the speedometer... yeah, I broke it trying to remove the needle.
Most cluster I've seen are plastic with the numbers and masking printed on the back and another mask and additional printing on the front.
There are companies that make EL back lit overlays for clusters for people who want to change the color and font style... and I'd doubt any of them would be willing to re-index it for you.... not to mention it's unlikely any of them even make something like that for a tarus.
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you could always light it from the front... I have a 99 Subaru Legacy and it does have some back-lighting but it's primarily lit front the front via 2 lights mounted in the hood in front of the gauges (but behind the glass... still part of the cluster assembly) I had done some modifications to mine and snapped a picture:

for reference this is (essentially) what it looked like before I modified it (not my cluster, since this one has a European kph Speedo):

I got rid of the car icon top center, got rid of the PRNDL lights between the gauges, added a set of polished aluminum trim rings around the gauges and swapped the originally green front lighting for "natural" uncolored lamps (I liked the soft amber tone as opposed to a harsh white that an LED would produce).
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BUT this brings me back to my other point about KPH clusters... that German cluster above goes to 180KPH... there's no reason you couldn't black out the little "km/h" logo and then just change the signal to read up to 180mph instead.