Hi Folks
I just returned from a 3000+ mile road trip in my '53 with my 15 yr. old daughter. My truck was purpose built for trips like this and we had a great time! [at least i think so! Pulling our '86 Starcraft Starmaster camper we spent the 4th+ in DC as well as time in NC, SC - Charleston & Hunting Island, Savannah GA, Montgomery AL, Chattanooga & Sweetwater TN & West Virginnia.

Aside from having to top up the master Cylinder with Brake Fluid and add some oil the only problem we had was with the Speedo Head going all "wonky" and burying the needle in the battery/ammeter needle going through West Virginia on the way home...it had started to squeak aday or two b4. I pulle the Speedo cable off and drove home with it disconnected. I re-connected it again yesterday and it worked but was squeaking bad so I disconnected it again.

This is my third head [from back-up clusters I've salvaged over the years] I had lubed the head by shooting WD-40 down the back where the cable threads to the head on all, but they have all given up the ghost after displaying similar symptoms. [Squeaking and or erratic "bouncing"]

I've done a search and didn't see any posts directly about this. I'm running an AOD behind a 5.0 SEFI and have bought the cables from Sy @ Midfiftys... am I doing something wrong?
Can these old speedos not run this fast or do I just not know how to lubricate them properly? I'd really like to run the original cluster for that Retro/Stock look.

GW

 

I'm somewhat confused from your description as to whether the problem is in the speedometer head or the cable. Graphite should be used on the cable and make sure there are no sharp bends in routing the housing which might cause binding. There is no lubrication for speedometer heads since they usually rotate on a bronze/brass bushing. WD-40 might help temporarily but it's a bandaid fix. If this is your third speedometer head, I'd seriously consider taking it to a speedometer shop and having it rebuilt instead of looking for another used one. You never know how long a used one will last.

 

I really believe that speedos do need to be lubed. While mine was on the bench I lubed it liberally with WD-40 to loosen it up. To test it I put the drill to it. I think the dril has to be in reverse to make the speedo turn.

There is a weep hole on the stem of the speedo where the cable threads onto it. I put a light oil in the hole. Check your shop manual, it might tell you how often the speedo needs lubed. It might be necessary to remove the spedo to find the weep hole the first time, or look on one of your old ones, before going under the dash to put drops of oil in it.

 

Thanks for your input guys.
The first time I had a speedo disaster it was the cable when it somehow got itself too close to the exhaust and just disintgrated... it was a mess. A new cable from Sy fixed that but later the head itself started a squeaky scraping sound and eventually just stopped working, hence the replacements.

This time, on the road, the needle started the sqeaky, scraping sound and after a day or so the needle started "bouncing" at a speed reading of about 70 mph [iit was reading high by about 15 % because I had the wrong gear at the AOD transmission] and the needle looked like it "fell dead" on the high side of the speedometer - in fact it was caught on the ammeter needle of the battery guage cause when I removed it shortly afterwards, the jostling of removeal, freed it.

For the rest of the trip, I re-installed the cluster and drove without the speedo cable attached just so I could have my temp, fuel and battery gauges. Yesterday, I hooked it up again but it was making these "bad sounds" hence my post.

I was wondering about the graphite vs WD-40... Like Abe, I had liberally doused the head in WD on the bench and used an old piece of cable to "turn" the mechanism to free it up...actually I didn't do that with this one but it didn't prevent the previous onces from giving up the ghost.

I've never heard of having to regularly lube a speedo.
I was wondering if the higher speeds, partially because of the wrong gear this time and partially because I running a modern drive line and keeping up with the salmon on the freeways was too much for it to handle after all these years!?

GW

 

Usually a bouncing needle is a sign of a bad or binding cable. The binding slows the cable and then it speeds up to catch up causing the needle to bounce. But it could also be that the head is binding up causing the the cable to slow down too. IMHO, you should not ever have to lube a speedometer head, however, you might get a little borrowed time out of one that it is on its way out when that bushing in the head becomes worn and starts to vibrate or bind up. The original speedometer should be able to keep up with the modern drive line with no problems if it's working properly. Unless you constantly pegged the needle I don't think the improper speedometer gear would have cause any harm. I have always used graphite on speedometer cables with good success.

 

Back when I was turning wrech it was common practice for us to lube speedo cables. We would use Lubriplate, or white lube or whatever you want to call it. There were two ways to do this, either reach up under the dash and siconnect the speedo cable, then pull the cable from the housing. Lightlu clean it, lube it, and reinstall it, the other way involved a special tool that screwed onto the cable at the tranny and had a grease zerk on it. I kept a small grease gun full of lubriplate to use with th etool. You had to be careful with this method as it was easy to push too much lube in the cable which could come out at the speedo head and make a huge mess....ugh

I'm with Vern here, usually a bouncing needle is signs of a binding cable
Bobby