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I have a TDr built from a FF kit. Speedometer is the typical Vintage Reproduction instrument. It says: km/h in the center of the dial and the larger, outer speed dial seems to be in kilometers (up to 130) with the smaller inner dial in mph.
So what are the units for the odometer, miles or km?
❓Kall 2015-04-25 13:46:25 I have the same kit. The speedometer is in two units. Here in the states they used to mark the speedometer with both units MPH and KPH with the MPH the outer and larger set of numbers and the metric (KPH) the inner and smaller set of numbers. The Brits did the same however they reversed the scales putting the KPH on the outer scale and the MPH on the inner. For reference, 50 KPH is close to 30 MPH. 100 KPH is somewhere around 50-55 MPH. Hope this helps.
Allen Caron
VW based 53MGTD - "MoneyPenny"
"If one thing matters, everything matters" - from the book The ShackAllen,I think he is asking what is the odometer reading miles driven or kilometers driven.BillBad Bill
Ah. I missed that. Not having driven mine I’m going to guess it is whatever is on the outer scale. In my case kilometers. Best way to know is to follow behind a friend. Have the front car drive one mile as you travel behind and at the mile mark see what your odometer says. Thanks for asking that. Its a valid point and one in which I hadn’t thought about. Good call Kall.
Allen Caron
VW based 53MGTD - "MoneyPenny"
"If one thing matters, everything matters" - from the book The ShackHad the same issues with my speedo. The outer (large numerals ) are in kph. Inner small ones were mph. After much thinking came up with a novel approach to solving this. As the saying goes, don’t raise the bridge, lower the river. To get the speedo to display mph without going through thee trouble of rebuilding the speedo head, I simply carefully removed the face plate from the gauge. It being flat, I placed it on my copyer/scanner and made an image of it to my pc. From there I photoshopped it and used the photopaper copy faceplate with the new large mph numbers pasted it over the kph faceplate. You can not tell the difference, and no need to recalibrate. Will post picture.
Likewise, same speedo. Hadn’t thought of the odometer being kilometers! Just expected it to be miles even though the emphasis is on the large KPH numbers. Wow, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.
I know distances around here very well so it will be obvious next time I’m out on the road. Gee, if it really is KM that means the current reading is only 800 miles.Changed the faceplate on the speedometer with a photo – shopped one.Although the odo reads in kph the gauge is reading mph.
How difficult was it to open and reclose the speedo case to access the face? I had mixed results doing this to replace broken glass on two of my 2″ gauges.
Also interesting to note that my two large instruments are mounted in reverse of yours (l-r)Kall2015-04-26 17:01:22It is a little time consuming removing the chrome surround ring. The good part is when remounted the wrinkled backside of the ring is not noticeable. Take you time to gently curl backside of the ring and it will curl back more smoothly. I never thought the tach or speedo were supposed to be right or left mounted. Any other reasons for this ? Maybe this could be the next hashed out discussion .
Great solution — My speedo also has “Big Number” KPH and small number MPH — and it is very hard for me to read it due to seating position and the size of the numbers —
My solution is no where near as sweet as yours — I mounted a spare small Garman GPS between the tach and speedometer and use it as an accurate Digital Speedometer. This was after that fine fellow with the blue lights on the roof of his car suggested I watch my speed as he gave me a little pink piece of paper.Since then I watch my speed digitally and ignore the people snickering at the 1952 car with the GPS mounted on the dash……!!!Ah…just more joys of owning a BCW TDr with a 200 hp 2332cc VW engine…….So I tested my speedo/odometer as follows:
Plotted a round trip to a known address about 5 miles away on Mapquest – distance shows as 2.48 MILES one way.
Noted odometer reading and drove the round trip – odometer shows the distance as 4.9 MILES round trip.
So I am convinced that my particular example of the Vintage Reproduction instrument is set for MILES.
Kilometers would have been 7.9 or 3.0 (if I could figure out which way to apply the correction) but it isn’t.Next step will be to try making a new face with bigger MPH numbers on top.:-)
My Vintage Repro speedo would show double the mph. I replaced it with a Speedhut GPS speedo that has no mechanical connection at all, and is 4-1/4″ diameter with a style similar to the real TD’s (can be customized). The GPS “memorizes” where you are so the speedo works immediately when you start driving instead of waiting to acquire satellites. It’s also irrelevant what tires or wheels you use.johnsimion2015-04-29 21:41:06
John, your GPS driven speedo does in fact need satellites to accurately display speed. It does however memorize your last location so that when you start out the next time, it knows where the satellites should be and looks for them there, thereby reducing the time of satellite acquisition to an “instant”.
How does a GPS work in a tunnel? (It really doesn’t.)(At least it’s not GPS-ing in a tunnel.)
(I taught NavSat, GPS, Celestial, and Dead Reckoning Navigation for a good number of years in the Navy back 35+ years ago.)
That dead reckoning speedometer is excellent over very long distances. But its reaction time is pretty slow.
Did the same as Kall, using maps.google.com, and found it to be very close. Odometer was 5.75 miles and maps said 5.8, so mine is also reading miles not kilometers even though KPH numbers are big and MPH are small. I thought it had to be kilometers until doing this.
I can’t see the speed with steering wheel blocking it so I found out I could watch the lower part of the speedometer instead. Just had to see where it would be for a few certain speeds like 30, 45, 55 and 70 MPH and memorize those.I line it up with the printing by the odometer where it says something like Kmph/hr, so the needle bottom points to specific places on that. Not accurate but good enough to not get a ticket. Of course, I’ve yet to check for speed accuracy at all so that’s next. Going to use a smartphone app and GPS.The military aircraft use range marks and lines (thin red stick on lines) on a number of the instruments. I might just put a speed line at 30, 45, 60 and 75.
Allen Caron
VW based 53MGTD - "MoneyPenny"
"If one thing matters, everything matters" - from the book The ShackYou are of course right about the GPS not working in tunnels, but there are no tunnels here. There are parking garages, but if I am going fast enough to worry about my speed in a parking garage, I don’t need the speedo to tell me that. I just think it is a neat fix that resolves all the mechanical, tire, and wheel issues while looking a lot like a real TD speedo.
So I took Doug’s suggestion and created a new face for my speedometer.
I did have some trouble with the thin, brittle chrome rim cracking but I was able to get it off and back on.
If anyone is curious about what the guts of the Vintage speedo looks like here it is:
If anyone wants the template for my speedo face PM me and I will send you a PDF.:-)
Although I like that change to big MPH, and color-coding some specific speeds, I just wonder if it might take away from the replication of a genuine MG TD.
Of course, I know many (most?) of these cars lack an authentic-looking dash in the first place. So maybe nothing wrong with some customization (or customisation).😀Oh… meant to say, my Vintage [reproduction] odometer is miles. However mine is also the large KPH, small MPH numbers. I’m guessing that could be different for others of these speedometers. Maybe depending on what they had available for sale? I wasn’t able to find anything about them.LRH2015-05-05 02:01:00
Just so everyone knows: TDs were produced with both MPH and KPH speedos, depending on the market they were built for. To my knowledge, there were not any that had both.
My version of the speedo face is a compromise. I used fonts which looked like the Vintage Reproduction fonts but I increased the size of the MPH numbers and simplified the dial scale.
I suspect that the kit maker chose the metric scales to add to the european flavor of the vehicle.
For me the bottom line was that the origional face was too hard to read while driving and I like to drive my TDr.
The road test described earlier confirmed that my particular odo reads in miles.
🙂P.s. i seem to recall reading somewhere that the Vintage Reproduction gauges were produced in Florida by a company specializing in boat equipment.Kall2015-05-06 15:12:39
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