Speed-o removal

[Pomorza]

Ladies and Gents

I require pulling out the speedometer in my 280z as the trip odometer (and thus the normal odometer) is stuck. By stuck I mean I can 0 it out but it will hi 9 and then stop and not move anymore. How difficult is said removal of the speedo? Anyone have any pictures?

Thanks all

Jan

[FastWoman]

It's not hard, Jan, as long as you don't have a full dash cap. You can jiggle a speedo or tach past a half dash cap pretty easily. As I recall, your two choices are to disconnect the speedo cable by reaching up under the dash (How large are you? It's a pretty tight area.) or to remove the tach first.

[Pomorza]

It's not hard, Jan, as long as you don't have a full dash cap. You can jiggle a speedo or tach past a half dash cap pretty easily. As I recall, your two choices are to disconnect the speedo cable by reaching up under the dash (How large are you? It's a pretty tight area.) or to remove the tach first.

Well I guess this got a bit harder as I have a full dash cap. I'll pull the thing off (not that difficult as its a POS to be honest). Would pulling the tach make life easier, I'm 5'4 so I'm not exactly the largest person

[Zed Head]

There's a tiny screw holding the odometer cable in place that has to be loosened. It might be possible with tiny hands but I think that you'll need to remove the tach to get to it. Stick your hand in the tach hole toget to the backof the speedometer. You might find that you can wiggle the cable end and retighten the screw and the odometer starts working again. The tip of the tiny screw fits in to a tiny hole on the end of the cable, locking it down so that it can't slip.

You might also be able to slip a stiff piece of paper or plastic or metal between the speedometer edge and the lip of the dash cap to get the tach and/or speedoout. Make a little ramp to slide it past the dash cap edge. A little Armorall to make things slipperier would help too.

[Captain Obvious]

There's a tiny screw holding the odometer cable in place that has to be loosened. It might be possible with tiny hands but I think that you'll need to remove the tach to get to it.

Yeah, that trip odometer cable... :ogre: Barring complications due to a dash cap, pulling the speedo out would be half the job if it weren't for that trip odometer cable.

The speedo is pretty much designed to be able to be removed with the dash in the car. In typical Japanese fashion, they set everything up such that it's supposed to be relatively easy to remove the speedo. The electrical cables have significant extra length such that the speedo can be pulled generously far from the dash before you run out of length, and so does the trip odometer cable.

Yes, I said it, "and so does the trip odometer cable".

The PROBLEM is that they wrapped the trip-o cable around the HVAC ducting so that it didn't hang down on your knee or get tangled up with anything, and because of this, it's tethered too short to get to the screw to release it.

My solution was to reach up and unhook the fresh air duct hose above the drivers knees and untangle the trip-o cable from the duct. Once that is done, there is enough length to get the speedo far enough away from the dash to get to the release screw. I think I also pulled to steering wheel just to get more room in there to work.

I was pretty frustrated by the time I got the end of that job, so I may be missing some of the details, so YMMV. :bulb:

[FastWoman]

Oh yeah... Forgot about the odometer cable!

So what happens if you park your car in the full sun to get the dash cap plastic pretty toasty? Then it might be more pliable when you try to shoe-horn the tach and speedo through the holes.

[Pomorza]

Well that went as well as putting a sqaure peg into a round hole.. Pulled the gauge out with no problem. Opened it up and cleaned the entire inside and lubed the odometer (trip) with some oil (not sure if that was a good idea). Decided to install new lightbulbs, two stores later cool got new light bulbs. Went to attach the trip reset (extremely small screw) only to have it fall and disappear into the abyss of the interior. Took me nearly an hour to find a 2M screw (Yes, its a 2M, I tried everything from 4M down..non fit). Reinstalled everything. Trip odometer reach 9 and froze.. ARG:mad: Reset it with the trip reset (which runs smooth as a whistle now and it reach 9 and froze again. I ended up just driving home and grabbing a beeer.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Jan

[Captain Obvious]

I was into the regular odometer section of mine, but not the trip-o.

You wanted ideas though...

Everything is gear driven, isn't it? If that's the case, then there's no way it should be able to get stuck without something skipping a tooth or something. Did all the gears look OK to you? Do you hear any clicking?

You can spin the input shaft of the speedometer while it's on the bench to make sure everything is working OK. Won't fix it for you, but at least you won't have to go through all the agony of putting it back into the car before learning that it still has a problem. I don't remember if there was enough length sticking out the back, but maybe you could even chuck up your cordless drill on the little stub and use the drill to turn it?

[Pomorza]

I was into the regular odometer section of mine, but not the trip-o.

You wanted ideas though...

Everything is gear driven, isn't it? If that's the case, then there's no way it should be able to get stuck without something skipping a tooth or something. Did all the gears look OK to you? Do you hear any clicking?

You can spin the input shaft of the speedometer while it's on the bench to make sure everything is working OK. Won't fix it for you, but at least you won't have to go through all the agony of putting it back into the car before learning that it still has a problem. I don't remember if there was enough length sticking out the back, but maybe you could even chuck up your cordless drill on the little stub and use the drill to turn it?

Everything is gear driven yes, I made sure everything was nice an lubed and everythig worked well. I didn't do the drill trick but I figured since everything was nice and slippery it would move nicely. Clearly I was wrong. I'll pull it out one of these days again and try to fix it.

Thanks all

Jan

[Captain Obvious]

The only other small piece of info I can provide is that the wheels operate on a mechanical system where it's normal for it to require more torque to move a digit when it rolls from 9 to 0. That's because when it rolls over, it has to move the lowest digit, and every other digit above it that's changing. In other words, it's a lot easier to spin from 0003 to 0004 than it is to spin from 0009 to 0010. It's even harder to spin from 0999 to 1000. Because of that, if there's a damaged piece inside that is jusssst barely working properly, it would be expected that it would fail first when digits are rolling over.

So good luck with it, and if it comes to the point where you need another set of eyes inside one, let me know. I've got a speedo here that I can open up if necessary. I might not know what I'm looking for on yours, but at least I could discuss the guts intelligently.

[Pomorza]

Mates,

I took the Z out for a nice cruise on I-10 today to go shopping (and well its saturday and I was bored). This is what I noticed. The all but one dial (the orange tenths of a mile one) has no problem turning, in fact they turn fine. It seems that the tenths of a mile dial seems to get stuck occassionally (yes occassionaly now) between 9 and 0. I pay attention and just move the reset a bit and its fine. Other times it goes just fine (i'm sure doing 75 helped).

Thanks

Jan