Arg! Who needs speedometer?

[ToughOldFord]

About a week ago I was coming home from work and the speedo quit. My first thought was I ruined another cable. Got home and crawled under the truck and the cable was still neatly tied way back from the exhaust system. I thought maybe the gauge itself finally died, it's been 10mph off since I got the truck. I had a replacement gauge, but I hadn't put it in yet because I was going to install the white inserts at that time. My instrument cluster plastic is yellowed from age is it's very hard to read the gauges, so I figured the white would help.
I pulled the cluster and gave the speedo a spin and darned if it still worked, I pulled the insert out of the cable housing and the cable had self destructed. It was only less than 5 months old so I took it back to Kragens and they exchanged it. This time I pulled it apart and greased the cable, all it really had on it was some assembly lube.
I swapped my speedo and did the gauge inserts:



Interestingly my speedo gauge had been replaced before, it had a date of 1971 on it.
However, even with the white inserts it was still hard to see through the yellowed plastic, it did help, but I wasn't happy with it yet:



So I figured I was going to pry the plastic off the back of the bezel and pry it off the donor cluster and glue it to mine, but I found that they're just set against the bezel and the gauges and cover is what holds the plastic in. (It's also set against 6 foam pads that slide in and has a guide to keep it straight)

Now I like the result, clean and easy to read:



I just reassembled it and took it for a short drive, the new speedo is a little jumpy at low speeds, but steadies around 50 and it seems to be more accurate than the old one so far.
This is the fourth speedometer cable in 2 years, I hope it's the last for a while.

[dcbullet]

You can get the new plastic for like $15. So that might be an option if you need to get even clearer.

[kid]

Are you getting a new speedo cable housing or just the guts?

[ToughOldFord]

Thanks DC, I didn't know it was still available. It's really clear now, the reason it still looks a little fuzzy is because of the pic itself. When I take the picture the resolution is something like 1600 x 1200. I shrink it down to 800 x 600 for posting purposes and it loses some of the quality.
Kid, the cable was still under warranty so they replaced the whole unit.

[jor]

I wonder why your speedo is still jumpy. I think most of us use graphite to lube the cable? Did you use something else?
jor

[ToughOldFord]

I just put a thin layer of bearing grease on it.
Don't know why it's jumpy, I've had several old vehicles in the past that were that way at low speeds, I just got used to it.
I did find out what happened to the old speedo though, the tape that hold the red high beam lens in got old and fell off and caught up in the rotating mechanism. Curious if it will work like it should now or if it was actually damaged.

[ToughOldFord]

BTW, the clear lens and white gauges made a world of difference. I went out last night and turned the lights on and I could see!
Before it was bad during the day, at night was a lost cause. The instrument lighting would reflect off the back of the yellowed plastic and I couldn't see squat in that cluster.

[kid]

Where do you get the white guage faces?

[Tim P.]

yea where DID you get them they pretty cool

[ToughOldFord]

There are links to a couple of sellers in this thread;

http://www.fordification.com/forum/view ... ite+gauges

It's too bad the galleries are still down, 460 Crew did a really good job on his dash.

[fordman]

i thought you were suppose to use graphite on the inner cable or at the most white litium.

[ToughOldFord]

Maybe so, bearing grease was all I had at the moment and I figured it had to be better than what it had. Especially considering the last cable self destructed after 4 1/2 months. And this truck isn't a daily driver so it might have seen 1,500 miles in those 4 1/2 months.

[kid]

I just remembered one I bought years ago. It had a warning to use Graphite only. Some newer cars have white lithium and some have teflon. The teflon ones use plastic for the inner drive cable.

[kknip]

Yep,grease will thicken from the heat off the exhaust and trans over time and seize up the cable.