spedometer repairs

[David Erickson <davide@Rational.COM>]

I repaired the VDO odometer out of my wife's '86 Jetta last night, which had the
classic symptom of intermittently failing to advance.  Previous posts I've
seen mentioned slipping or broken gears as the usual culprit.  I looked mine
over carefully, found nothing broken.  Then I found that I could advance the
miles indicator wheel by hand if I played with it.  i.e., I could spin it,
it would advance the 10's wheel correctly, etc.  That was the problem - there
was enough side to side play in the indicator wheels to allow the "star wheels"
to disengage and the indicator wheel to spin free.  So, adding a nylon washer
to take up the slack fixed it as good as new.  Getting the nylon washer in
place was easy: the shaft they ride on can be easily pried out enough to slip
the washer in place at the far end.

BTW, there is a mark on the face of the speedometer for aligning the needle
when you push it back onto the shaft.  I found the mark by lifting the
needle over the stop pin to see where its 0 point was before I removed it, and 
found it was aligned with a little white line.

The hard part of the repair was getting the speedometer out in the first place:
the Alpine cd player is designed to be removable only by a crowbar!

Next I'll try the '84 Coupe GT's odometer.  Same symptoms, but different
manufacturer and probably different cause.

-Dave Erickson