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I can't figure this out.
car is an '86 9K
This was a highly intermittent problem until recently when it reared it's ugly head in a more permanent way.
My speedo made some terrible racket with a wildly bouncing needle and then failed...
it left the needle at 35MPH, noise quit immedeately but the odomoter kept working just fine.
I've been driving like this for more than a few weeks now with no more noise, odometer works fine.
Yesterday I yanked it and took it apart to find the cause of the failure.
I'm totally stumped.
As it turns out the needle shaft had sheared off, so it fell right out. That's weird I thought.
I had assumed that the drive cup and needle cup had interfered... this would explain the noise and also the sheared needle.
I could not get them to drag at all... although there was some slight lateral play on the drive cup... but try as I might and I just couldn't get them to interfere.
So I tore into it to try and find the nature of the problem.
Very close inspection of the needle cup reveals very slight scoring... so I guess they were dragging... even though I couldn't cause it to happen myself.
My friend has seen speedo cables that have stretched/grown in length and caused intereference between the cups (although this doesn't seem possible with the design of the saab speedo) and also suggests that a stretched cable can cause premature wear on the drive bearing.
I have pinched the drive cable from a start and could not get the calbe to bind or slip ... so it seems the cable isn't dragging and the drive gear in the trans is likely in good shape... nothing but smooth operation out of the cable.
anyways, I've got another used speedo that has around 150k on it (mine had 90k)
I inspect it closely and check for cup interference, all is fine. I pop it in and within a day the noise returns and the needle seems to be bouncing a little.
Next step is to get a new cable just to cover my bases and I plan to use the other cable to drive the speedo manually so I can watch for the problem.
Is this a common problem with these speedos?
Did I get unlucky and happen upon another bad one and just need to get another?
It seems to me that either there's a problem elsewhere that is causing this (speedo cable) or this is indeed a common speedo failure problem...
however I know there were a lot of these sold and a lot that have seen several hundred thousand miles -- I'd think that if this was a common problem I'd know about it through faqs, this board, tech bulletins, etc.
What gives? Common problem or what?? Anybody have a fix?
posted by 74.138.206...
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