Quick Intro + Thoughts on Odometer repairs

[Bruce Ayling]

All,

Brief intro: I recently acquired a fairly "upgraded" '87 924S so am new to this forum. As a side note, not all that long ago I swore I'd never own a water cooled P-Car - safe to say I've now eaten those words and am damn glad I found out what I was missing. I also have a '73 914 2.0L (wife's making me sell it - according to her two Porsche's is just plain pretentious - I know, I'm still trying to edumacate her...) and have spent a fair amount of time with 911 SC's and a very modified 914-6.

I was plagued by the notorious odometer failure and after doing a search here, pulled the speedo and went straight for the red gear on the end of the odometer shaft. This unquestionably was a problem, but much to my displeasure even after super-gluing it firmly in place the odometer still wouldn't turn over when I used a drill to spin the cable input shaft. A little bit of playing revealed that if I applied light pressure to the trip-meter reset rod while spinning the cable input shaft, suddenly everything started to work as it should. Without fully disassembling the speedometer (something I wasn't willing to try just yet) I couldn't tell exactly what was engaging/disengaging when I applied this light pressure. Failing a complete diagnosis, I ended up slightly stretching the return spring attached to the trip meter rod (effectively reducing the return tension) and all has been good for 300+ miles and counting - fingers crossed!

I hadn't seen this posted in the threads I initially searched on odometer woes, so hopefully it will be of use to someone else.

Best regards to all!