Speedo Needed - Vintage Speedster

I am assuming that because the Vintage cars come with the smaller sized 4-1/8" diameter reproduction gauges that Kirk would be real only source for the replacement speedo.

The repro speedos and tachs are real hit or miss.  Folks here have gone thru 3 or even 4 before giving up and sending the unit off to have its guts replaced with VDO innards.  they can add MPH to existing gauge or do a new face. North Hollywood Speedo is one source - but there's others (search here).  You'll end up with a quality gauge for about the same cost as a crap repro. Ask if they give a discount for doing the tach at the same time!

There's also Palto Alto Speedo - a long time established company.

http://www.paspeedo.com/about.htm

There's also Palto Alto Speedo - a long time established company.

http://www.paspeedo.com/about.htm

Cary Hines (Spl Ed/Beck) commissioned to have VDO make some repros for him - not sure size - I thought all the repros were same size and OEM were different. Think he said they'd be ready by June.  Hoping he offers a complete set to SOC members at a good price.

Hey GTman...

Same thing happened to my speedo recently.  Squeel squeel squeel...and the needle was going crazy....  in fact part of the needle snapped off because it hit the stop so hard.  Havent opened it up yet.  But now im curious.

Mike

Hello Mike:

Yes, when my speedo was squeeling the needle was going pack and forth alot, in fact it do go all the way over to about 6:00 and pegged out.  It probably managed to avoid snapping by the main gear shearing off first. 

I've now spoken to technicians at both NHollywood Speedo and Palo Alto Speedo and they tell me that for this speedo seizing of the odometer gear shaft is common if the speedo is not disassembled and the odometer gear shaft is not lubed.  Its also more prevalent for the KPH speedo because the odometer gear shaft operates at higher RPMs than a MPH speedo, expecially when your're doing a freeway run.  Thats when mine went, doing about 110 KPH.

Thankfully my needle did not snap and my speedo is still useful for indicating speed (the speedo needle operates of a magnet and spring mechanism that is only magnetically coupled to the incoming speedo cable), so I popped it back in the car last night.

NHollywood speedo said that they can repair the unit (since is a Brazilian made VDO) for $160, with about a 3 week turn around.  Kirk at Vintage says he has replacements for $150 but they are Chinese replacements.  I think that my money is better spent repairing mine if what NHollywood does is replace the inners with a fresh VDO mechanism.  I live in the Los Angeles area so will probably run over there on Friday morning to get a better idea of the scope of the repair work.

Thanks, Grant

All good info Grant.  Thank you.  Too funny... I DO have a KPH speedo...and it does live right at 110kph on the freeway, because at that speed, I'm already turning 3600 rpm.  Looking forward to installing my 3:88 tranny. ;-)

Mike