Odometer quit, 89 100 - lessons learned

[George Selby]

At 11:04 PM 1/30/2006, you wrote:
>2. Contrary to what many people say, this needle cannot simply be pried off.
>The plastic needle is fused onto the shaft.  I was able to remove it by
>first gently prying off the black placstic cap on top of the needle.  Then
>heating the end of the shaft with a soldering iron and gently lifting off
>the needle.  Replacement is the reverse... heat the shaft and gently push
>the needle back on.

I pried two off from instrument clusters from a 90 200, so it's not 
impossible.  One was a lot harder to get off than the other, but I didn't 
use any heat to do it.  Just a conflicting opinion...

Other than that, the other info seems correct.  My previous 89 80 had the 
same problem, I just didn't care about the mileage shown, so I never fixed 
the odo.

I think the plastic in the gear may be influenced by the ambient heat level 
in your area, the replacement cluster I received (and extracted the gear 
from) was from Minnesota, and the plastic had an entirely different shade 
than the plastic on the broken gear, as if the broken one had been heated 
too much over a long period of time which lead to it's eventual failure.

George Selby