My Bouncy Old Speedometer
Here I am pulling out of the garage heading down the street, gazing down the long hood of my E Type. Windows down, nice breeze going thru the car, no need to turn on the air today. Heading West, fifteen minutes and I will be out in the open corn fields of Northern Illinois. Maybe I will head out to DeKalb and go by the new windmill farm. Better yet, why not keep going towards Galena and drive some nice scenic roads out that way. Better check my gauges...yep, everything is OK except the speedo needle strangely bouncing all over. Im now stopped at a light and as I get going the needle bounce's between 0 and 30 mph, how annoying! Oh well, its 41 years old what do you expect. Ive been cruising the interstate for a while, my portable GPS says Im doing 65 mph, my speedo says Im doing 110! Now this is really annoying! Got to do something about it. After asking around about having it recalibrated I found a company (Mo-MA) in Albuquerque, New Mexico that does this sort of work.. I called for more information and the nice lady I talked to told me the whole story about my problem. Seems that years ago, a company was reproducing speedo cables that were a bit too long. They would fit just fine but the extra length of cable at the speedo end would hit the little magnet inside and push it off its mounting place, throwing off the calibration. Makes sense to me, I wish I would have saved that old speedo cable I replaced last year. I could have checked to see if it was one of them bad ones. The end of the speedo cable that fits into the speedo should only have 3/8 of an inch of cable sticking out of it. If your cable has 1/2 inch or more, you have one of those cheap replacement cables that have caused a lot of problems. My speedo is now as steady as can be, at any speed, and accurate. Its matches my GPS perfectly. Im a happy customer. The cost to recalibrate the speedo was $100 and it took a week to get it back. I was surprised how fast they did it. If you have this problem, Mo Ma can be reached at 505 766-6661 and be sure to replace that old speedo cable that caused your problem in the first place.