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Speedometer question

frank1

NAXJA Forum User
Location
British Columbia
Does any one know what the resistance is supposed to measure through the coils on the '91-96 speedometer drive?
I bought a cluster with gauges to replace my idiot lights and it turned out the speedometer didn't work, it did some funky stuff, but didn't tell speed. The odometer does work properly.
I swapped my old speedo into the cluster, but it doesn't match the rest of the gauges, so it looks kind of goofy, and it doesn't have a tripometer.
I expect it's the circuit board on the back of the speedometer that's screwed up, but it would be nice to know the values the coils are supposed to have before swapping the board off my working speedometer. It would be a pain to wreck the board and have to find a new one.
 
Nobody else seems to have any ideas, so here's what I found, maybe it will help someone else:
Resistance in one set of coils seems to be about 210 ohms.
Resistance for the other set is about 445 ohms.
(These are my own measurements, on a few speedometers. There are four pairs of pins in all, these were taken directly at the pins.)
The new speedometer with the bad board is a "type 14".
Old speedometer with the good board is a "type 16". (type # is on the speedo face when you remove the bezel)
Type 16 pin is at about 8:00, numbers end at about 4:00.
Type 14 pin is at 9:00, numbers end at 4:30-5:00.

I expected either board to run either speedometer, but that wasn't so. The board off the old speedometer on the new one resulted in the speedometer reading way high. This may be because of the different start and end points of the needles, or maybe the new type 14 speedometer was damaged in some other way.
My solution finally was to remove and reposition the needle.

To do this I flexed the needle slightly to get it over the pin and let it find it's rest position below the pin. I did the same with the type 16 speedometer.
Then I carefully pried the needle off the type 14 and pressed it back on in the same rest position as the type 16. Moved the needle back to the other side of the pin and tried it.
It seems to be very very close, within about 2 km/h at most speeds as far as I can tell.

Getting the needle off was very painstaking. It takes quite a bit of force and you have to be careful not to scratch the gauge face. It would be very easy to wreck the gauge.
 
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