Ionic 1.x change sass variables not working

Question

I know this issue has been discussed a lot but I cannot change the SASS variables in an Ionic 1 project and none of the existing topics solved my problem.

I want to override some colors to this:

$positive:                        #aac83e !default;
$calm:                            #11c1f3 !default;
$balanced:                        #81d4fa !default;
$energized:                       #ffa000 !default;

But when I do nothing changes. Running gulp sass produces no error message but it doesn't update the colors.

The problem might be because I have some css errors in the ionic.app.css file but I don't know where they came from because I didn't change the original file.

The problem I think it might be is the version of Ionic. I'm using Ionic 3.10.3 for an Ionic 1.x project.

Any alternatives to overriding the colors or solving the errors?

Thank you!