SAAB 95 & 96 WIPER MOTORS WIPE AGAIN!

 Wiper motors again! This ugly duckling is a Lucas motor for a late SAAB 95 or 96. This one was in its fairly ugly, not working, state when I received it.   Nasty....

 Here is the same motor...DE-nastified, and ready to be reassembled and tested.

 Ah, Henry Ford would be proud of me....three of 'em reconditioned and ready for reassembly.

...and here they are, ready to do their duty happily in a vintage SAAB 95 or 96.  All have been tested for both speeds, plus self park.  Neat, aye?

VINTAGE SAAB SPEEDOMETER CABLES

Somebody said, "Hey! Reconditioning speedometers is great, but...what about the speedometer cables?" What? Your speedometer won't run without a cable? Oh, all right, then, I'll build you a new speedometer cable.


Vintage Saabs [1961-80, models 95, 96 and 97(Sonett)] used two different style cables, each in two different lengths. The Saabs through 1969 used the early style cable, shown above. This is about the early style cables. I'll deal with the later style...ummm...later. You can see that the early cables used metal screw-on connectors on both ends.

I need your old, dead-as-a-doornail cable, even if it looks like this, which most of them do. I need the end connectors. The rest is junk.

The INSIDE cable shown here is a not-quite dead-as-a-doornail Saab 95/96 cable. The OUTSIDE cable shown is one of my new cables. Saab thought they needed a fat, bent, rubber section on the transmission end. Not one of their better ideas, because A--the cable is constantly bending in that area, and B--the rubber rots and breaks [see the photo above]. Later cars did NOT have the fat, bent rubber piece and guess what? The speedometers worked just fine with a "normal" cable. I do add a piece of plastic sheath about 8" long at the transmission end, to protect the outside of the sheath. I also use modern sheath material with a vinyl tube inside, so the rotating cable never rubs metal-to-metal. So if YOUR speedo cable is dead-as-a-doornail, I can make it all better!

SPEAKING SPEEDOMETER

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.