VDO Speedometer Rebuild

[Derek]

So this last friday I decided to take apart my speedometer to try and fix my odometer. I finally got around to it after reading Billnparts write-up on his that you can see here. I didn’t take any pictures during the process but it is fairly straight forward. 

First of I removed the bezel which I did so very carefully with a narrow screwdriver as I wanted to be able to re-use it. After bending the edges out enough to pull it off I removed the glass and gasket and used some needle-nose pliers to open up the edges a bit more. 

Then I was able to pull out all the mechanical bits to look at them and figure out what was wrong. The first thing I did was remove the connecting gear which was gummed up and didn’t spin easily. Got it cleaned up and lubed and I pulled the worm gear out of the main housing area (which has a friction clutch and is bolted to the back of the dials) and cleaned it up and cleaned its slot in the housing. It was press fit into some sort of gear inside the housing but it had become worn and did not engage well so I put a dab of superglue on the end of it before replacing it in the housing. 

I was also able to attach the shaft that holds the odometer dials onto an electric hand drill and take off all the mileage since I just had the engine rebuilt. 

While I had it all apart I cleaned the glass, sanded the bezel and removed the needle since the paint was fading and chipping. Luckily the face plate was still in good condition. Took a rattle can of satin black to the bezel and airbrushed the needle after cleaning it up. (didn’t want to bother with a trip to the store so I mixed up some acrylic paint and used my airbrush) I also cleaned out the can that everything sits in and put a fresh coat of gloss white to keep it bright at night when the lights are on. 

Got everything back together and had my dad drive down the street at 15mph with me following to set the speedometer need correctly (it uses a friction clutch with a coil spring for friction and when I took the needle off I had no way to tell where it needed to be.) after another test to make sure it was set right I took it back out and installed the glass and bezel and (very slowly) crimped the bezel back down with a screwdriver and some taped up needle-nose pliers (to avoid chipping the paint) and did a little touch up paint since I did still end up messing up the paint a little???. and I have a brand new speedometer! Kinda. 

Thanks to Billnparts for being the guinea pig and showing us how it’s done!

[Bill Gould]

You make it sound very straightforward, Derek. Would love to see some before and after photos.

1981 Lafer TI
1600 cc Type 1 engine

[newkitman]

At one point in time I saved a copy of a Hot VWs issue on redoing the face/dial on a standard bug speedometer. Not certain  if I still have it but will look for it. It was a step by step how to. I think the issue was back about 5 years ago. Used that method on my Ghia speedo and it came out great (to me anyway).

Allen Caron
VW based 53MGTD - "MoneyPenny"
"If one thing matters, everything matters" - from the book The Shack

[Derek]

Well sometime on the way home from work last week the odometer stopped working again and I have been putting off taking it apart again. (Drat! I was looking forward to getting an accurate reading of my mileage and what kind of gas mileage I get!) This time I will take a few pictures of what the inside looks like and how it looks with the nice fresh paint. (I’ll do a side by side picture with my tach because I didn’t take any before the paint)

[Bill Gould]

Looking forward to it! 😛

1981 Lafer TI
1600 cc Type 1 engine

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