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Ancient V W speedometers, clocks and their mount "pods" seem to find me no matter how good I hide. This shows how they look when I get them....UGH! Nasty! But I guess if I'd been sitting around in an old, musty 1950 V W all these years I'd look a lot worse! Time to make 'em look and work good....
V W did things differently in 1950...above is the flip side of the speedometer pod, and the photo shows the bakelite casting, with the bosses for the three switches and the four warning lights, plus some crusty 1950 wires....
AHA! All better now! New wires, even. This particular V W obviously had an accessory item of some sort taking power off the input connection [No. 30] of the ignition switch. The old, inline fuse holder was kaput so I installed a new one [the red fuse holder to the left of the speedometer pod]. They're ready to go back into the old VeeDub.
[Drumroll...] And here they are--almost as nice as when they were first installed in Der Beetle back in 1950. Cool, huh?
This is a Volkswagen Vanagon speedometer--late version--all laid apart. The plates in red are two of about 40 special mounts and tools I've built for working on all manner of speedometers. On the left, the plastic main mount, and in its center, the magnetic drive for the speed needle. UNDER the light color, round housing--barely visible--is the worm drive gear for the odometer portion of the unit.
At the top, orange colored, is the printed circuitry for counting off the miles driven so a warning light can come on urging the Vanagon owner to boogie to a V W dealership and spend a lot of money to have a tech push a reset button and turn off the warning light. This B.S. was done in the name of lowered emissions. Dealerships loved it. The owners? Not so much.
To the right, the dual register odometer assembly with its plastic framework. Previous Vanagon speedos had an aluminum framework, so you see the result of company bean counters at work. Look at the BOTTOM, main, register. On the right end you see a white gear. On the left is a much smaller, yellowed gear. Both are plastic and both tend--with age and jillions of miles of use--to get tired and release their press-on fit with the register shaft. Result? No odometer activity, though the speed reading may still work OK.
The FIX is to replace the larger gear, and in this photo the white gear is a new one that I just installed. Additional FIX is to replace the small drive gear on the left, which I have also done in this photo. The "innards" are ready to be carefully lubricated with modern temperature stable, non-hardening lubricants and reassembled.
According to ancient V W Service Bulletins, these late model Vanagon speedos can get noisy. The problem is that the wee bushing holding the speed needle shaft [see the center of the round housing in the main mount, in the photos above] gets worn badly, as the miles build up. This lets the magnetic "can" below the bushing to move around, touching the outer housing, and causing a noise that drives m'lady bananas. I have a FIX for this, too, but this particular speedometer didn't need it.
M'lady can drive this one a couple hundred thousand more miles before it drives her bananas.
Believe it or not, what you see above are instruments from a 1950 VW Beetle. I received these beat-up buggers from a customer with a plea to make 'em "like new." On the left, two speedometers, on the right a wind-up clock. In the center, two "pods", as VW folks call them, that hold the speedo and clock and then bolt into appropriately sized holes in the instrument panel.
This is the flip side of one speedo, the clock and the pods. Note that the speedo pod also mounts the ignition switch, and switches for lights and windshield wipers. As you can see, 65 years allows pleanty of time for crud to build up on all the bits.
Both pods are cast in bakelite, as far as I can tell. Four idiot light mounts are also cast into the pod. There was quite a bit of brass--for wire connections, etc--to be polished up, and the switches had to be disassembled and cleaned, then reassembled--in the correct order and orientation. The bits only go [correctly] together one way.
The clock--cleaned up and ticking--in its cleaned, primed and painted pod. The shaft at the bottom combines to wind and set the time of the ol' ticker. The new rubber seal [black in the photo] around the pod cushions the unit in the panel.
Here are the pair, ready to go to the owner. Note the switch knobs--very much 1950's style--on the speedo pod. These are to go into a completely restored Beetle, and will probably be the highlight of the interior of the wee bug. They led me a merry chase, but I'm quite pleased with the final result. Good stuff...
