[ERP]

I received the black gauge face and plexiglass the other day and they look great. But while attempting to install them today I'm fairly certain that I broke my gauge cluster . While pulling out the speedometer needle the small steel pin came out with it. I tried to put it back into the actuator, but it now has a lot of drag when it is rotated and it no longer has a stop. What I mean by this is that before removing the needles I gently rotated them, they moved very easily and swept about 300 degrees, stopping at zero and approximately straight down. Now the speedometer needle spins 360 degrees but with significantly more drag. The pin is all the way into the actuator but does not appear to rotate correctly.

Has anyone run into this problem before or know how to fix it without buying a new gauge cluster?

 

[ERP]

SUCCESS! It can be fixed! :nanner:

It turns out the speedo actuator wasn't actually broken. When I pulled the pin out it expanded the plastic base it was pressed into. This created extra drag and kept the needle from rotating. The red arrow in the picture below points to the metal pin. Specifically at the (difficult to see) stamped section which is about 1/4 from the end of the pin (this end goes down when the pin is installed). That tab has a wider diameter than the rest of the pin, when it was pulled out it distorted the diameter of the gear base.

Here is how it is fixed. There are four plastic tabs which hold the top of the white actuator plastic to the bottom. Through the small slits in the top press the tabs inward one at a time and work the top off.

Driving gear

The blue arrow points to the hole the gear base fits through. I found it easier to enlarge this hole than to file or sand down the gear base. I used a small screwdriver which was slightly larger than the hole to open it up. The red line points to the ~330 degree groove in the actuator top and the small nub on the gear base which rides in the groove. This is what controls the limits of the needle sweep. When the gear reaches the end it stops moving and the indicator needle spins on the metal pin.

Here is how everything stacks up.

Finished black cluster with working speedometer :coolnana:

 

[ERP]

Finally got everything back together, now I just need to clean the interior.

Those are an A/F gauge and boost gauge flanking the cluster.

 

[ruggedbert]

This was very helpful. Thank you.

 

[zender]

ERP looks good. Question about the other gauges, how did you attach the gauges flanking the cluster? Also what casing do you have them in or is it custom? How hard are they to read when driving? Seems like the wheel and/or the turn signal/wiper stalk might get in the way.

 

[kfennell]

Holy cow, thanks so much for this thread! I don't know what I would have done without it, but I sure as heck would have taken longer then the 10 minutes it took to find this thread to fix!