Restoring Factory Speedometer

today's episode: The Can" how to look like a mad scientist on your back porch:twisted:

the speedometer housing is fairly well protected behind the dash, but weather will take a toll

Pic one: a slightly rusty speedometer can. note those nice numbers, they will not be there when we are done. if that concerns you, they could be redone or you may want to buy an NOS speedometer.

rust removal by electrolisis: I'm not going to do a full how-to on this process, I highly recommend surfing the net for websites dedicated to this process. you will find way more information than you need to do this.

the tools:

pic 2: rectifier. no you don't need to rush out and buy your self a "Swest Elector-Plater Model 25A, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to show off what 2 bux got me at a garage sale. the best rectifier for the job is a small model railroad transformer. must have variable speed control.

pic 3: washing soda. I searched for a year to find this stuff, the very day I gave up and tried baking soda (which works just fine) I came across this in our regular grocery store . I had to restrain myself from buying 20 boxes. the benifit of this over baking soda is that it will remain in solution indefinately, the other seems to precipitate out after a while. about a half cup to 5 gallons will do fine.

pic 4: a metal container to hold the items. I found this gigantic stainless pot at a thrift store for 6 bux. ordinary steel will work fine but will deteriorate with use, plastic can be used but electrodes must be added. once again google to learn more.

the part, suspended in the electrolite, is connected to the negative terminal of your transformer, the pot or electrodes in the pot are connected to the positive. simmer at approximately 4volts, 1/2 to 1 amp for about an hour.

what you will find when you remove the can from the electrolite is a black powdery substance in place of the rust. careful... it will get all over you . wipe it dry and most will come off as you do so.

pic 5: the can with rust and paint removed. the only problem is that where the rust was, there are now areas of no plating where rust will quickly reform.

How to fix that problem:

we interupt this brodcast for this public announcement:

Thank you Sparky for facilitating my continued ramblings.

tune in next episode for some interesting plating repair ideas

 

Plating...

at home, no less:

quick story: I used to work in a place with large rotating machinery. one day we developed a leak on a 12" diameter shaft that ran about 22 feet long. the leak was in an area of the shaft that would have been very expensive to remove. it was caused by overtighting of a packing gland. the packing in the gland was wire reinforced so the shaft was scored.

enter a company called in-place-machining. I spent a whole weekend watching this guy lay down first copper then nickel over the scored areas of the shaft. he had a large rectifier like the one above with a small paint brush on the end of the positive lead. he would dip in the solution and work his way around the shaft.

after plating up, he assembled this cool machine around the shaft which ran stones around the shaft and ground it flat again. all in all a very interesting process, and... the shaft still leaked slightly but I was hooked on learning how to plate:twisted:

Google is your friend www.caswellplating.com.

You can get really carried away with it, but we are after simple and cheap.

note: read and follow all safety precautions by the manufacturer, know how to read and follow the MSDS.

Pic one: Caswell's plug and plate nickel plating solution. this is the 8 oz bottle that comes in one of their plug and plate kits. if you are interested in trying this the kits are relatively inexpensive. if you are cheap like me, you will realize that a good rectifier (4V 300ma) a set of plating leads (aligator clip on the positive side, squarshed piece of tubing of the appropriate material on the nagative), an 8 oz bottle of the appropriate plating solution, a small swatch of your favorite gym sock and you are in business.
all of this can be gleaned from reading the caswell site.

I know what you're thinking, the speedometer housing is not plated with nickel, and you're probably right. I suspect zinc or possiby tin or something. but I have replated the rusty sections with the nickel solution which is really easy to work with and as long as you dont polish it to a shine, you can't tell the replated areas from the factory plating on the housing.

Pic 2: I already plated the housing so I am working on a wire hold down bracket from a military style black-out light assy. note the leads... Caswell sells these little pieces of fabric to wrap your positive lead in, I found that I can control what I'm doing better if I lay the cloth on the piece to be plated and run the applicator over it.

pic 3: after plating, note the dark areas, that is where the new plating overlapped the old.

pic 4: after slight buffing with some never dull to remove the darkened areas.

the pic of the speedometer can in the previous post is after plating . the whole process took less than 10 minutes. longer for larger areas.

I am more interested in rust prevention than bling, but if you are interested in laying down some show nickel, copper, brass, chrome, silver or even gold plating, Caswell can set you up do handle as large or small of job as you have in mind.

 

Interesting thread. I just had a thought on what to do about repairing the face...I can't think of any reason you couldn't build a new one in photoshop, print it out and attach it to the old face. Then you could make it look like anything you want. You could make it look like a smiley face, or a big JEEP logo, or an altimeter, or whatever makes you happy. It would of course help to have the original handy so you can test print it and make sure you index the numbers correctly. Printed with good ink on some good photo paper, I don't know why it wouldn't hold up at least as well as the original paint. There are ink/paper combinations that are supposed to resist fade for well over 100 years. Or, you could have a printer run it off I suppose. I'm wondering if this is the only way I'll ever get the correct face for my '55 .

Just a thought I had...may or may not actually work in practice.

 

I have spent some time out on caswells site in the past. I bought some ceramic coating they make. I don't know that I will call it cheap, but if it works as advertised then I will call it cheap. It was $70 for 12OZ. They have a lot of interesting products and applications techniques.

As for your plating power source, won't a small trickle charger work? Horsepower TV did a bit on the corrosion removal process a while back and I want to say they used the battery charger.

 

I wonder if you could put the face of the speedo on a scanner and scan it, then clean up the scan and print out the label?

 

yes a trickle charger will work. I tried it with my walmart special 6/12v charger and it is a bit more than you need (lotza bubbles, no dicernable decrease in required time to remove the rust). if you look around, a good sized 4.5v wall adapter for a cordless phone or any other low voltage divice is usually available for nothing, easy to attach aligator clips to and will do the job nicely.

as for the plug-n-plate nickel, $11 roughly for 8oz of the solution. cheap in my book.

 

yup, $11 I will call cheap I just happen to have a bunch of left over wall adapters like that... Funny how they stack up on ya after a while.

 

Should work fine actually. Before I had a decent digital camera, I scanned all kinds of stuff. I scanned a bunch of my handguns and they actually came out really nice. I had a big piece of white canvas I would drape over it so the background was all white. I suppose you could also just put a camera on a tripod and do the same thing. A copy stand would work well. Scanner would be easier though.

 

Well, a year has come and gone and my speedometer has not completed it's self.

Let's talk... Odometer

Warning: the deliberate tampering with the odometer reading is prohibited by law. the information given here is intended for the cosmetic restoration of a speedometer and not to facilitate the changing of Odometer readings.

Sparky please delete if deemed inappropriate

prior to removing your odometer, make a note of the milage so that it can be returned to the same number when reassembled. this is also a good way to replace a faded out odometer assembly with one from a cleaner speedometer, just make sure it will fit correctly before disassembly.

Picture 1: the odometer rataining spring is shown in this view of the speedometer mechanism. to remove this spring, grasp the end visible in this picture, pull slight tension on it and move it toward the speedometer face until it contacts. a slight twist and push with the pliers will push the retainer through the guage and out the bottom bringing the odometer number assembly with it.

Picture 2: shows the removed number drim and retaining spring. what is not very well shown is the small metal discs between the number wheels. each disc (stay) has a protruding notch which engages a ridge inside the speedometer frame and holds the number drum steady. these stays control the ratchet function of the number wheels only allowing them to rotate in progression.

Picture 3: shows the ridge I spoke of above, also identified are the bearing points that hold the number drum and the odometer window through which the odometer can be read from the face of the speedometer.

cleaning... the number drum assembly is fairly rugged. after checking to see that the numbers were not painted on, I cleaned the wheels with a tooth brush and dish soap which brightened them up quite a bit.

Picture 4: prior to reinstallation of the odometer number drum assembly, all of the number wheel stays must be ligned up. I used an allen wrench to hold them all in alignment while I checked the number. 2500 miles is shown here to make it clearly visible where the numbers line up with the odometer window.

Picture 5: reinstallation is the reverse of the disassembly procedure listed above. It took me a few tries the first time before I got the numbers to realign the way I wanted... trial and error.

today's final thought: some of the component names given above were made up because it was the easiest way I could come up with to explain. my appologies to the professionals out there if real names exist.

 

Lubricating a speedometer is touchy business. most I have seen that were stuck or sluggish freed up with a bit of light machine oil in the oil cup at the rear of the speedometer where the cable attaches.

this is a case of a little goes a long way. most of the greased parts, where gears mesh should never need more grease. they don't move very fast. if you absolutely can't stop yourself from adding grease to them, use a small artist paint brush and a very small amount of grease. any more and you will be attracting dust and dirt exactly where you don't want it.

the oil points (except for the oil cup) take about a drop of light oil; 3-in-1 or singer sewing machine oil work great for this. again, a drop only, do not use any spray, if it gets on the face it will discolor the paint. if it gets anywhere else, it will attract dust.

in one of the pictures above you can see the bearing on the needle shaft. it also gets one drop of light oil.

wipe away any excess.

almost forgot, the oil cup should get a drop or two of slightly thicker oil every year or so. the cup is located on top of the rear of the speedometer and can be reached with the speedometer still mounted in the dash.

 

For those interested, the best match for indicator color that I have found is Special Purpose Krylon Flourescent #3102 Yellow Orange purchased from Home Depot. I painted the speed dial and the fuel and temp indicators as well. Couldn't tell it from original which was really still in good shape .

 

Wow, lots of great information. I just recently redid my dash and decided to take the speedo apart just to clean it. What a huge difference, looks like new. I just took the glass and trim off, I was afraid to go any further .

I also just recently tried the rust removal method with my battery charger and plain baking soda ( couldn't find the washing soda either) and it worked great. If you try this, primer or paint your freshly cleaned part ASAP. It will surface rust again right away after its cleaned and dried.

 

Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm trying to reference the pictures that are called out in posting #15 in this write-up. According to the description they are pictures of dismantling the speedometer. Can anyone point me in the right direction to find said photos? I have the ones of the internals and would like to get the missing ones to start my rebuild. :?
Thanks,
Rick

 

this really has been a good thread and I really appreciate the time gone into posting up the rebuild info, however, I may be able to rebuild the entire driveline, rewire the puppy and tune it till it sings like a song bird, but tackling the speedo I will leave to a professional.
I really want mine redone, lights, crystals, painted and such. I noticed one posting of a shop in Denver, Does anyone know of a shop in the Southern Ca area?

 

id like to get mine completely redone as well. mine is missing the speed indicator... which is a bit of a problem imo.... I'll probably pick up an aftermarket one to tide me over til i get the original rebuilt.

But as the original has the original miles on the od, id like to keep that going as much as possible.

I found this: http://cushmanspeedometer.com/

 

I went to the Cushman site
Called him up. Had a short chat and decided to send it out
He is very friendly, knows the units and stated a 3 week turn around time.
Has a shipping label on his site for you to fill out and send with the unit, replies when he receives it with a email. That is service.
He states he wants to get them back on the road, not retire them.
Thanks for the link

 

Anyone have any ideas on patching the black paintin a speedometer face? I found a NOS speedo face but there are a few spots on the edge that I need to be touched up. I was thinking of maybe a sharpy but was worried about reactions with the factory paint. Anyone have any ideas?

 

Hmmm... yeah, I was wondering where all the pictures that seem to be referenced have gone as well. I just pulled mine out and need to begin trying to figure out how to work on it. The needle seems to be loose and wobbly on the centershaft. I'll post something if I can figure it out.