We took the odometer apart again. It turned out that the shaft had seized due to some loctite getting between the shaft and the plastic bearing surface on the pot metal gear end of the shaft. The interesting thing is that you can reassemble the gear on the shaft, after scratching up the inside dia. of the
pot metal gear. You do this without removing any of the number gears. Putting a small drop of loctite on the inside of the pot metal gear, you slide and press it onto the shaft, hoping the loctite and scratches will keep the gear from slipping.
Unfortunately, you have to slip the shaft into its plastic bearing at the same time, immediately after it has come into contact with the loctite. While it seemed to move freely initially, it did seize up later, causing the plastic gear on the other end of the shaft to slip. I used a little WD40 on the shaft, while working the mechanism back and forth to free it up. It's working now.
Oh, and after removing the cluster from the car for about the fourth time,
it took me all of 4 minutes to remove the cluster from the car, 7 more minutes to get the odometer apart down to the gear train. Much better than the first time I did this ( a week of messing around and asking questions online).