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VDO speedometers are pretty trouble-free, for the most part. However the ODOMETER portion gets tired after while and in order put them into good fettle once again, they have to come apart. This isn't a real easy thing to do, assuming you don't want that nice chrome bezel all boogered up.
This is the anti-booger tool that I designed and built. It clamps the speedo just right, and the handle [with a wedge tool attached to the speedo end] peels the chrome bezel off, slick as a whistle, without damaging the bezel. SLICK!
I have to take off the speedo needle in order to get the number face off, in order to take the speedo apart to get to the odometer bits that go South. The needle is fragile. I'm using a little puller tool that I built--to pull the needle without doing a booger job on it, either. Gentle is the name of the game when working with speedometers!
Voila! the face is off and I have the front half of the speedo in my left hand. I've set aside the rear portion of the unit. I'm pointing to a plastic gear that is in the chain of gears that drives the odometer [and the trip meter as well]. Unfortunately, this easy-to-get-to plastic gear is NOT the one that gives up the ship in these speedometers. ARRRGGGHHH! 
See that little brass gear? That little sucker isn't the one that goes tango uniform, either. But it has to be pulled to get to the bad one. The bad one is the GREY pot metal gear just to the right of the numbers register that is on the bottom in this photo, between the last register and the speedo frame. I built the little puller I'm holding. That little sucker pulls that wee brass gear quite nicely. THEN...I can take the numbers drums out, get the bad Grey gear [called an "advancer"], replace it and chuck it all back together. Fun times!
I hate to re-create wheels. So I spent time drawing [in rather a lot of detail] exploded views of all the gubbins in these speedometers. Makes the process of disassembly, cleaning, repair, oiling and reassembly a whole lot easier. So if your odometer refuses to odo, I can make it all better once again, because, see...I speak speedometer...HA!
I've been repairing these VDO speedos for some years now. I don't see them as some sort of mysterious device that can only be repaired after a lot of money has changed hands. Give me a shout--let's talk about what it takes to fix the VDO speedo in your wee Saab.
I regularly have a need to bend pieces of sheet steel or aluminum, or strap of either persuasion. A small brake was in order, so....I built one. The component parts are shown here. 
There are three pieces of 1.75" x 1.75" x 0.200" steel angle, some 0.200" thick pieces of plate [at the ends of two of the angles], a couple of 0.50" diameter "J" bolts, a 6.0" piece of 0.75" O.D. pipe, and two 7/16" bolts with nylock nuts.
Here it is, assembled, with a piece of 18 gauge sheet steel set in place, ready to be bent. [The light colored piece in the middle of the brake is the steel to be bent]. The aft, LOWER angle is mounted in my bench vise. The aft UPPER angle holds the piece to be bent into place by tightening the nuts on the welded-in-place bolts on either end. So now it is just a matter....
...of lifting the handle to bend the piece of steel sheet. The brake will accept metal up to 12.5" wide,
and will easily bend aluminum sheet up to 0.125" thick and steel sheet up to 16 gauge. It will also bend steel strap up to 0.125" thick and 2.0" wide.
The angle of the photo isn't great, but it does show the piece of 18 gauge bent to about 45 degrees. At this point, I simply loosen the two nuts on the aft TOP angle and slide the bent piece forward, out of the brake. As they say in the translated instructions, "Welding, some drilling and cut is to be required." Followed by three equally well translated paragraphs on how not to kill yourself with your welder, your drill press or your hack saw.
At any rate, this is an easy to build, and very useful little tool that takes up very little storage space for the 98% of the time you won't need it. And it works like a champ for that 2% of the time when you DO need it.
You are looking at the front of another customer's Saab V4 transmission, mounted in my factory transmission press. The gear with the large teeth is the pinion gear. Above and to the left of that gear is a screwed-up input shaft hub. Inside that hub is the freewheel unit. The pulley-looking thing sticking out of the hub is whats called a "dog clutch" gear. Someone with probably good intentions had welded on half washers to hold the dog clutch engaged, rendering the freewheel inoperative, or as we call it,"neutered". 
The problem with this neutering method is that it throws the main shaft out of balance, and makes it impossible to ever revert to freewheeling again. This is really not a good way to neuter the freewheel.
Here is the main shaft after I removed it from the transmission. You can clearly see the dog clutch piece dangling from the freewheel hub of the main shaft. Hmmmm.....what to do to save the expensive main shaft and dog clutch....hmmmm....
I put the sucker in my lathe and began to cut off the half washers, by cutting through the welds. This is the cutter set-up on the carriage fixture on my lathe. I have made the first cut in this picture.
This is the second and final lathe set-up. The cut has gone through the welds and is into the half washers. My hope--at this point--was that the welding had not screwed up the freewheel hub. If it had, the mainshaft was junk.
VOILA! The cut is completed. The owner got lucky. The main shaft, the dog clutch and even the freewheel parts inside the hub were all still good. All I had to do from this point was to use the lathe cutter to clean up the end of the freewheel hub.
The point of this? There is a right way and many wrong ways to do something. This was one of the wrong ways that I managed to correct. I WILL neuter the freewheel, but do it the right way, so nothing is out of balance, and should the owner [or subsequent owner] ever get soft in the head and want to make the freewheel function again, he [or they] can do so.
Bosch distributors, as used in Saabs with V4 engines, get old, tired and sloppy. [I've known some mechanics like that, too...]. Bosch didn't bother to put bushings at the BOTTOM of the distributor body, so over time and a lot of miles, the aluminum distributor body gets "hogged out". When that happens, the ignition point gap varies as the engine runs, the dwell changes, and the basic engine timing changes. And the engine runs like crap.
Here is my setup in that pretty blue lathe again, to machine out the bottom of the distributor body so I can install a bushing. I built a precision tool [mounted in the lathe chuck in this photo] to hold the distributor body on its exact center line. The precision lathe bit [shown in the steady chuck at the bottom of the photo] does not move. The chuck in the lathe rotates the distributor body as the steady chuck advances the bit through the body, machining the correct diameter hole as it goes. 
Here I am using a larger bit in my big, commercial drill press to do a light chamfer in the freshly machined hole. This will allow the bushing to start into the distributor body easier.
I use a bolt that is machined to JUST slightly smaller than the diameter of the new bushing to guide the bushing into the distributor body. The bolt is long enough to fit through the bushing on the TOP end of the distributor body, so the bolt forms a perfect guide as I press the bushing into place. The bushing is an interference [plus] fit into the distributor body. 
I use an adjustable reamer to open up the bushing to an inside diameter equal to the diameter of the distributor lower shaft, plus 0.003". I always HAND ream, and never attempt to speed up the reaming process as some might by putting the reamer in a hand drill. I ream a little, then test fit the shaft, and repeat the process until it is just right. When I'm finished with one of these Bosch distributors, it doesn't know it isn't young, vibrant and ready to go for thousands of miles once again.
I seem to have accumulated, over the years, a whole lot of drill bits. Well, y'know, you break one or it gets too dull to make a hole, and you throw it in a box and buy a new one. Or some supplier offers you a deal you can't refuse on a whole new SET of drills...and finally you get tired of moving the box of tired drill bits around. Either sharpen 'em or pitch 'em out. Given the price of new bits--especially the larger diameter bits--I decided it was time to call....THE DOCTOR!
The DRILL DOCTOR, to be more specific. Behind several dozen drill bits in various boxes, is the DOCTOR, itself. It is the gray machine just to the right of center in the picture. To the right is a drill bit in a special chuck, ready to be sharpened. So--if you'll pardon the pun--here's the drill:
You put the drill to be sharpened in the special chuck, loosely. Then you insert both into the opening on the Doc. The one toward the left end of the little machine. You use the special fixture in there to orient the drill in the chuck correctly. Then you tighten the chuck, lightly, take it out of the Doc and finish tightening it. Next it goes in the opening on the right end of the little machine. You turn on the switch and rotate the chuck clockwise, with a gentle pressure on the chuck. The machine operates the bit on a cam and cuts the bit at the correct angle AND on a bevel that puts the cutting edge of each side of the bit higher than the heel, or back side of the bit.
The bloody bits come out BEAUTIFUL! I did all different sizes, from 3/32" up to 1/2" and Mr Doc didn't screw up ANY of 'em. I got into it and before I knew it, 2 hours had passed and I'd sharpened 67 old bits. JEEZ! I can drill the hell out of stuff now--HA!
I WISH this were a paid testimonial for DRILL DOCTOR....but, sadly, it ain't. But I can tell you one thing---I saved enough dough in that two hours [in the price of new drill bits] to pay for the little Doc a couple of times over. The little sucker really works!
