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Hi,
Out of the six cars that I have four of them have the electronic speedometers.
I can safely say that it’s the smallest gear, that is the 25 tooth one, that has failed every time!
It fits on the larger gray one and connects the motor shaft to the bigger gear that turns inside the ring gear. It’s sort of an one-third planetary gear system. Not a very well evenly driven engagement.
In fact the bigger gear is counterweighted to help compensate for it. It’s also a little bit sloppy but they (VDO) lucked out!
At first I would pull a salvage yard cluster to get new gears but that soon ended when they had already gone soft!
It also got so bad that they were missing from inside the speedometers or the whole head of the speedometers was ripped from the cluster only!
This was when I gave in and made several of my own to cover all my cars and the extra cluster collection, out of Delrin or an acetal material.
The original gears seemed to be made of an almost rubber like material that rotted and consequently the gear teeth break off.
When you remove the motor make sure you look for any pieces of that gear everywhere around inside there with a good magnifying glass! The remnants are still soft and sticky.
Also, here is a word of caution about removing the instrument cluster! Make sure that you keep up with every wire you take off and do not put any “EXTRA ONE” you might find loose laying around next to the wiring harness in the dash! Take pictures of the backside, if you can.
As I remember it might be red with a white or yellow stripe, do not use it! Put tape over the end of it if you find it upon removing the instrument cluster! HIDE that baby!
That wire if connected will burn out a chip or the stepper motor on the speedometer head!
I think it’s an auxiliary wire to the ignition coil that might get used when updating to a remote tachometer? Don’t hold me to this but I have read several pitiful stories on here about it!
There are lots of posts made on this problem, so if, you use the right words, in your quest, the FAQ’s might help.
Phil
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