How do you remove the speedometer needle?

[MaximRecoil]

I'm about to pull my instrument cluster to apply decals to the faces of the gauges, but the only thing I'm unsure of is how to remove the speedometer needle.

[Dino]

Hold the big metal wheel at the back and hold it steady.  Grab the needle with your fingertips and pull straight up.  If you don't hold the wheel something's going to break.

[MaximRecoil]

Hold the big metal wheel at the back and hold it steady.  Grab the needle with your fingertips and pull straight up.  If you don't hold the wheel something's going to break.

It doesn't want to budge when I do that. Isn't the needle pressed into that little coiled spring that's behind the face, the one which makes the needle return to zero on its own? What do you do about that?

[XH29N0G]

The needle is pressed of a pin that sticks up through the face.  Below are two pictures.  The pink stuff is something on there to hold it (probably paint) from when I put it on last.

I remove it by holding the round wheel thing in the back, and gently twisting the needle until it comes loose.  it is easy to break and the springs can be easy to mess up..  

[Dino]

Yeah it's just pressed on the pin, the spring itself does not touch the needle.  I guess I was lucky, mine came right off.  Not sure if there's a benefit to WD40 or something.   

[MaximRecoil]

Excellent. Gently twisting while pulling did the trick; the needle came off no problem. Thanks XH29N0G and Dino.

[MaximRecoil]

While I have the speedometer out, is there anything I should do to it; e.g., lubricate it or something? I don't want to do anything that would require me to tear it apart.

[XH29N0G]

Hopefully someone who know more should reply to this.  The Speedometers are a delicate balance between the springs, induced magnetic fields, and resistance on the moving parts.  I have heard some oils can harden or cause dust to accumulate which can gum up the mechanisms, but there probably are oils that are good (I do not know about these Teflon oils for bike parts).  I cleaned my speedometer by immersing the mechanisms in a solvent (isopropyl alchohol in a glass), but am not sure that was a good idea.  We will see.  It fixed some issues in the 40+ year old speedo like the needle bouncing, but others related to the spring/magnet balance - like calibration remained.  

If yours is presently working the way it should, I wouldn't mess with it.

[Dino]

I did not use any lubricants but I did take as much apart as I could to clean it up.  It's been two years since I did this and the needle and odometer still work as smooth as can be.  If you do use a lubricant it has to be super low viscosity and stay that way. 

[MaximRecoil]

I did not use any lubricants but I did take as much apart as I could to clean it up.  It's been two years since I did this and the needle and odometer still work as smooth as can be.  If you do use a lubricant it has to be super low viscosity and stay that way. 

In my experience, 3M dry silicone spray (08897) works good for stuff like this.

[Dino]

I did not use any lubricants but I did take as much apart as I could to clean it up.  It's been two years since I did this and the needle and odometer still work as smooth as can be.  If you do use a lubricant it has to be super low viscosity and stay that way. 

In my experience, 3M dry silicone spray (08897) works good for stuff like this.

I looked it up and I agree, that should work just fine.   

[Cooter]

Some Speedos have a wick in which you lube with light machine oil. It should look like a very long flat blade screw.

[MaximRecoil]

Some Speedos have a wick in which you lube with light machine oil. It should look like a very long flat blade screw.

I don't think mine has one of those; not that I can see anyway (it is a '69 Charger speedometer).

Does anyone know if there is anything in there that can be harmed by dish detergent and water? I'd like to soak it for a while in warm soapy water, rinse it, and let it dry before lubricating it.

[MaximRecoil]

If yours is presently working the way it should, I wouldn't mess with it.

The needle bounces slightly on mine. It bounced worse when I had an old aftermarket speedometer cable installed. I recently installed a new, correct Mopar speedometer cable (part number 04897646AA), which was the right length, came pre-lubricated, and had a firewall grommet already installed on it. That reduced the needle bounce, but it still bounces a little. When everything is working correctly the needle should be rock steady, like in this clip from The Dukes of Hazzard (filmed in 1979, 10-year-old Charger at the time):

http://youtu.be/Oe2esLlAz7A

[XH29N0G]

I don't know about soapy water.  You don't want a residue so you would need to soak in non soapy water afterwards.

What I did was to use isopropyl (rubbing) alchohol.  I put it in a glass, that only the back part fit into,  Then I sspun the speedo with a drill spinning the right direction to make the speedo work (I think reverse).  (I fit a square wooden match stick in the drill and used that to spin the speedo.  Your spare cable might also work and be safer. 

I did this to get the isopropyl to move around in the mechanism.

Keep in mind that I break lots of things (the speedo was better after this but still did not read correctly) - so I really would wait until someone who knows how to do this comes on line before taking my advice.

[MaximRecoil]

Before:



After:

[XH29N0G]

Excellent!

[A383Wing]

......the numbers should be white also....not brown

[MaximRecoil]

......the numbers should be white also....not brown

You mean the odometer numbers? I'm not concerned about those; they are still plenty visible, and even if they weren't, it isn't often that I need to know my odometer reading at a quick glance while driving. I didn't do this as an exercise in beautification, because my car is a beater and if the original markings on the gauges were still anything close to white I never would have touched them. I did this strictly for functionality, because the numbers on the speedometer were practically invisible before, especially 0 through about 80 (they show up okay in the "before" picture, but that is because it is not sitting in shadow in the dash while your eyes are adjusted to the relative brightness through the windshield).

By the way, if I did want to mess with those odometer numbers, I'd simply polish them until they are white, rather than use stickers. I don't believe that those numbers are printed on with ink, but rather, that they are made from white plastic that is separate from the black plastic of each wheel (and vice versa for the 1/10th mile wheel). It is the same way the dial numbers are done on the old Western Electric rotary phones that Ma Bell leased to practically everyone in the country prior to 1984. It is also the same way the letters and numbers are done on the keys of the venerable IBM Model M computer keyboard. Numbers made that way can never wear, fade, peel, or chip off, for obvious reasons.

[MaximRecoil]

I just noticed that I should have posted this thread in the "Electric, Gauges, & Lights" subforum ...

I got everything back together today. The new face decals on the speedometer and the 4 small gauges (the clock's numbers were still more or less white, so I didn't touch that), along with polishing off the haze on the clear plastic lenses, made a big difference in how well they light up at night. I think they are perfect as-is, and that's with the standard bulbs. Any brighter and they would be distracting:



(Not the greatest picture, but that type of picture is hard to take, especially with a relatively cheap automatic camera)

Also, there is still a little bit of needle bounce at speeds under 30 MPH, but at 30 MPH and higher, the needle is rock steady, which is a huge improvement. Before, the needle had a lot of bounce, at all speeds.