This morning my dad and I attempted our first DIY, Brickboard-inspired repair on my car. I took some digital camera pictures, with the intention of creating a basic walk-through of the process, but I wanted to make a few comments first.

The little odometer gear was definitely at fault. When we opened up everything, it had at least two teeth missing, and it came apart even more when we tried to remove it with needlenose pliers (eventually just dumped it out and went from there). I *think* it had 25 teeth. My car is a 1989 240 GL sedan. The replacement gear had 25 teeth.

My one problem--while removing the speedometer cluster, we rested part of the bottom on the corner of the steering column. Eventually, through pushing and pulling, we forcefully and accidentally "removed" a warning light that was part of the bottom row. I thought it was a bulb failure light, but it apppears to have actually been the "Overdrive Disengaged" light (for automatics). I say this because the contacts and things were bent a bit, though it went back into its hole easily, because the "Overdrive Disengaged" light no longer works. The overdrive (and disengaging it) works fine, but the light no longer comes on when I click the button on the shifter.

I wish we had been more careful and avoided this incident, but it's not a huge deal. I don't disengage the overdrive *that* much, and now that I know what the problem is, I think I can cope. I suppose sometime before summer I'll have to pull out at least part of the speedo cluster again and try to repair this problem (anyone know where I can get bulbs and holders for those warning lights?), but for now I'm extremely happy I have a working odometer for the first time since early 2002! I'm at 103,275 miles, plus a few now that I've test-driven the car (plus 7,000 or so in the interim). 200,000 miles, here I come!
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'89 244 GL--25/22 ipd sways, Volvo truck amber turn signal lenses