Club 80-90 Forums

Is it me?

I bought my van in March this year, and driving it home from Carlisle to Liverpool. About 60 miles down the road the speedo stopped working following a bout of needle fluttering. It had worked perfectly up to that point. During the full service which followed my arrival home with the van, my local garage fitted a new speedo cable which was supplied by a VAG parts dealer as original equipment. The speedo worked again, but the needle flickered up to speeds of 35 ish MPH. I took it back, and the mechanic packed the cable with grease as best he could. This cured the flickering needle for a while, but this week after only 800 miles since the new cable was fitted, it snapped so I am back to having no speedo again. The mechanic has suggested it may be due to the square hole in the grease cap being worn out of square, but this does not ring true somehow as it does not look that badly worn to my eyes.

Does anyone have any ideas to help me sort this problem out? I am even considering buying an electronic speedo head from Just Campers, but they don't advertise the sensor unit to drive it.

Is the cable being secured with an "E" clip at the cap end?

As far as I am aware, a circlip at the cap end, and a little clamp thing to hold the outer cable steady near the cap end.

Hello,

the routing of the cable is pretty crucial - to make sure the bends are as gentle as you can make them. There are various ways of routing the cable up there, but find the one with the least tight bends. Also make sure it's not tied up to the spare wheel bracket so that the spare wheel is pushing against it - this will deform the casing in time. The entry to the speedo housing itself is a funny angle on mine, as the speedo housing points down slightly causing a certain amount of stress at the point where the cable joins - this means sometimes the cable end gets a bit bent, also causing flicker.

It might be useful in your diagnosis to figure out exactly where the cable snapped.

I've done everything you can imagine to sort mine out, but it still flickers under about 30ish, and I reckon it's due to the angle the speedo clip meets the speedo housing. It's usable after 30 with the cruise control and I've given up worrying about it!

Good luck sorting it out.

Ewen

I think the break in the inner cable is quite near to the speedo head as I can hear the broken end of it clicking as I am driving along. The whole cable does seem ridiculously short as it is very difficult to avoid kinks in it at some point. Another couple of inches would have made all the difference. (NO smutty remarks please.) If at first you don't succeed, get someone who knows all about it to do it for you.

Hello,

are you sure it's broken then? That's often a sign of a bad connection at the speedo - have you unclipped it and had a look?

To get a couple more inches (I said nothing) - when the cable comes up alongside the radiator, there are two possible entry points at the bottom - one is sort of diagonal and closer to the hub - in my opinion is better and reduces the stress on the cable, but it's easier to find the one where the cable has to do a sort of right angle.

Hope this helps a bit

Ewen