John S's Journal

Upon driving the car late last Fall, I noticed that the speedometer had ceased to work and thought I might have caused it when I was messing around in behind the dash. I thought perhaps that I had inadvertently pushed the LED bulb in too far and that it had fouled the needle as some LEDs are a bit too long and have been known to do that. I was able to confirm that it wasn’t and after a few frustrating drives this Spring sans speedometer/odometer readings, I finally got the car jacked up enough to investigate.

I ran a drill in reverse and confirmed that the cable through the speedometer could be ruled out because it operated just fine which leaves the gearbox end of the equation. I was able to confirm that the end of the driven gear was turning when I rotated the prop shaft but noticed that I had to push it inwards a bit before it engaged. This led me to think that I just needed to ensure the cable was inserted fully and snugged up and that I could run the car a bit on the stands and all would be well. Nope. Fail. Advised to pull the driven gear to inspect which revealed no damage so then was advised to inspect the drive gear and also the flange nut torque. If memory serves, it was torqued to spec for OD gearboxes so I moved on to checking the drive gear with my borescope. Again, no damage to the drive gear which leaves the flange nut. No problem, I’ll drop the prop shaft and check the torque. Not a 10 minute job for me like it might be for some but not too bad for an old fart laying on his back and stopping now and again to get some feeling back in his arms. 20 minutes later the prop shaft is disconnected and up and out of the way. Located a suitable socket for the flange nut, grabbed my torque wrench and crawled back under the car to discover that the overall length of the torque wrench doesn’t work so well when the car is only elevated on jackstands. Why did a buy such a large torque wrench?


The new torque wrench showed up last evening. Wasn’t motivated to crawl under the car until this morning. Wedged a screwdriver in between two flange bolts and checked the torque. No smoking gun so I’m out of things to try. I got the car back down on the ground, put the tools away, cleaned up and went for a drive. Speedometer? I don’t need no stinking speedometer. I’ll keep using my iPhone GPS app I guess.

It’s a good thing I’m retired and this is just a hobby.