Ok, I’m not able to post from my own account for reasons I do not fully
understand, and my wife (Wombat’s) account missed the original post called
"speedo ok, odometer not" Soooo, without further ado, here is my original
post from way back when my odometer died and I was able to fix it………
From s…@wam.umd.eduThu Jan 18 14:24:16 1996
Date: Sun, 12 Nov 1995 10:51:37 -0500
From: Spence Spencer <s…@wam.umd.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.autos.makers.vw.watercooled
Subject: Odometer drive gear repair
Yesterday, I finally got around to fixing the stupid non working odometer
in my Jetta. Basically, the wisdom on the net has been that the
inoperative odometers are the fault of a drive gear in the speedometer
iself. This was the case in my car too. Disassembly of the speedo (BTW
this is a fiarly fiddly procedure) revealed that the metal drive wheel
(gear) on the right end of the 10/mile cross shaft had become loose on the
10/mile shaft. Ive seen several other posts on correcting the loose drive
gear here, and I guess that the most common recommendation has been to
use loctite or some type of adhesive to lock the drive gear to the shaft.
I have had poor luck using loctite around plastics in the past, problem
is. loctite will wick into any hairline cracks in plastic, and since it
expands when it sets up (that’s how it works) it will enlarge invisible
cracks, and can completely destroy a plastic part. Since the drive wheel
and the 10/mile shaft are both metal, I used a punch to stake the drive
wheel to the shaft. Worked fine although reassembly was a real pain and I
bent the 10/mile shaft while pressing the drive wheel onto the shaft. Had
to disassemble the whole mess and straighten the shaft. I also set the
odometer to what I believe is the approximate actual mileage on the car.
Dash disassembly / reassembly isn’t a terribly difficult procedure after
youve done it once, and the neat thing about a VW dash is that the
reassembly takes about 1/4 as long as the disassembly did. Goes to show
that these cars were designed to be easy to build, not necessarily easy
to maintain (altho VW is better than most on that score too). If anyone
else needs to do the odometer repair and needs advice / warnings/ don’t
do these’s drop me an email or a post on the NG.
Spence..
87 GLI with about 100k.
(writing from Wombat’s account.)