Brick nose speedo

[Thewespaul]

Ah right, for some reason I was thinking he first gen sterlings didn’t have a vss

 

[laserjock]

Everything works on the Speedo including programmng it for new tire sizes and the odo/trip works too, very simple to hook up also, ground, ignition, battery constant and the 2 wires to the vss and the vss output to ecm/cruise works also.

For the Speedo cable use a dry graphite lube to lube the cable, common problem is the cable binds slightly which causes it to accelerate abruptly and the speedometer portion is very senstive to acceleration changes and is shown as bouncing on the needle, you will notice your odo is accrate throughout this.

My odo is definitely not accurate though. The rest of it sounds similar to what you are describing. The OBS speedo is very intriguing. If I can’t come to some resolution In pretty short order, I might go the nuclear option and hunt one up. Other than it not matching I see no real downside.

 

[pelky350]

Slightly unrelated to this topic but In one of the pictures the needles are off the gauges, do they just pull off the front or are they connected in the back? I was thinking maybe I can change the color of the needle on mine by installing some sort of color filter but I didnt want to break the gauges

 

[ifrythings]

Slightly unrelated to this topic but In one of the pictures the needles are off the gauges, do they just pull off the front or are they connected in the back? I was thinking maybe I can change the color of the needle on mine by installing some sort of color filter but I didnt want to break the gauges

The needles just pop off from the gauges, the back side of the needle is painted orange so you maybe able to remove the orange color and paint it to whatever your new color is. Make sure you have some way of marking the needles to put them back on, you can't just mark it on the face of the gauge and put it back on. What I did was remove each section of gauges and put a 9v battery across 2 of the pins and see where it moved to and used that as my mark.

 

[Shadetreemechanic]

When I have bouncy needles I always clean the whole cable well and then use white lithium grease. As someone else posted, they make a graphite oil specifically for the job, but I have never used it.

 

[catbird7]

Check sleeve the cable rides in. Check from gauge to transfer looking for melted areas or bends / kinks, even holes from wear. Sounds like the cable is the issue however you may need cable and sleeve. Cable could be snapped or not fully inserted into gauge???

 

[laserjock]

It’s a new cable. I don’t think it’s bent or kinked but anything is possible.

Can someone tell me how to pull the cable from the jacket? It’s no obvious to me how to get it out. I don’t think it will pull out from the tcase side. Will it pull out from the cluster side?

 

[hesutton]

The cable run close to the hot turbo plumping? Any change it has gotten a bit toasty?

I'd look at the drive gear and driven gear if ya can. That's what has given me the most trouble on my '86 F250. The drive gear in the T-case is crap on 1356. It will work occasionally and bounce a little. Most of the time it doesn't move. No speedo no odo either. But, the speedo works great when I have the 1345 on there (dead now so that's no longer an option). I don't have to time or the patience right now to pull the 1356 apart and repair/replace the drive gear.......... so I drive by the tachometer.

Heath

 

[laserjock]

It really doesn’t Heath. Speedo cable goes through the floor board at the fuel pedal. Over to the frame rail and back to the tcase. Maybe it wiped the teeth on the gear if it bound up. Man I hope not because I had a hell of a time getting the cable connector seated in the tcase housing. It was a really snug fit on the new one for some reason. I broke the original adapter fighting the trans in the last time and had to replace it. The cable was disconnected so I don’t think I hurt it. I dunno. Electric is sounding better and better.