VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1937-1945 Speedometer cable lube ?

I have a very small noise, "click" coming form the back of my speedo.. between 10-20 MPH.

Does this indicate the cable may need oil/grease/service ?

If so, how's that done ?

Thanks,
Michael41

I'm certainly no speedometer pro but I lube my cable by unscrewing the housing from the back of the speedometer, pulling the cable out of the housing, cleaning the cable, liberally applying lithium engine assembly lube to the cable, re-inserting the cable into the housing and re-attaching the housing to the speedometer. You may need to turn the cable slightly one way or the other to get it seated all the way on the tranny end. Your speedometer itself should have an indention just in front of the cable housing with a small hole in it. Inside that should be some packing similar to cotton fiber used to store & wick the oil to the speedo shaft. I was told years ago that is it's purpose anyway. You can place a couple of drops of light oil in the indention. I use sewing machine oil & shoot it into the packing using a small syringe.

If you do all that & the clicking is still there you have other issues than lubrication.

As to lubricating the shaft, I was told many years ago to not lube the last 8"-12" of the cable inserted into the housing. The reason given to me was that the lube on the first portion of the cable left a coating on the entire inner surface of the cable housing and too much lube on the last 8"-12" of the cable could work itself up to the speedometer head and cause problems.

I've followed that advice when lubing many cables over the years and have never had a problem.

Just my 2¢

That is correct. I also only lube the bottom two-thirds of the cable.

I never heard that. I'll store that away in my "learned something today" file.