Club Cobra - Help Me Troubleshoot My Speedometer

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Help Me Troubleshoot My Speedometer

I have about 5500 miles on my car. Richmond 5 speed, speedometer right angle adapter coming out of the tranny and a Stewart Warner Speedometer. Speedometer worked fine until a recent road trip. It started bouncing all over the place and eventually fell to zero and wouldn't move. I took the transmission tunnel cover off and removed the speedometer gear and discovered that the teeth on one side of the gear had essentially been "worn away." They weren't chewed up or anything, just kind of worn away.

I checked the speedometer cable and it seemed to turn freely. I put a drill on the speedometer cable and the speedometer seemed to work fine so I just replaced the speedometer gear. When I installed it, I coated it with a coating of engine assembly lube. After putting it all back together it seemed fine. I could detect a very small bounce, about a 1 MPH bounce, but other than that it worked fine - for about 100 miles. After 100 miles or so, the speedometer bounced around for a minute or 2 and then fell to zero. I haven't taken the speedometer gear out yet to see if it is also worn away on one side.

So, any suggestions on what's causing the problem?

You changed the driven gear....but did you check the drive gear also? It may be incorrectly meshing with the driven gear...causing wear.

The speedo cable retainer is tight, right?

I looked at the drive gear with a flash light while it was still installed in the tranny and it appeared to be okay but it's pretty hard to tell.

Yes the speedo retainer is tight. My first thought was that the speedo gear was installed into the tranny at a slight angle but I've concluded that that would be impossible to do.

Anyone here ever replace the drive gear in a Richmond 5 speed? Looks like I'd have to open the tranny up completely since the case is a 2 piece case bolted together. No access cover or tail housing that can be easily removed.

Chris

The two gears NEED to have the same ratio. Although 5500 mile would leave you to believe they do, you might want to check both gears and make sure they mesh.