RustBucket

iTrader: (1)

My speedometer cable has been a bit bouncy for a while, but the cold weather made it really bad recently. Here's a short writeup on how to clean and lube it.

- Take off the gauge cluster bezel. It's only 5 screws, very easy to do. It helps if you tilt your wheel down first.
- 4 screws come out to free the gauge cluster. At this point the speedo cable will prevent it from coming forward very much.
- Find where the speedo cable comes out into the engine bay. There's a clip you need to take it out of. Then shove a couple inches of cable into the firewall to push the cluster away from the firewall.
- Unplug the connectors on the back of the gauge.
- Unplug the speedo cable and remove the cluster. I chose to zip tie the cable end onto a bracket:




- Pull the cable up out of the sheath until the rubber seal unseats:



- Disconnect the bottom side of the cable from the back of the transfer case. Let it hang over a bucket.
- Proceed to squirt brake cleaner under the rubber cable seat. I was only able to get a small amount in at a time. It took a while for it to start running out the end, but it was pretty grody once it did:



- I found that I had to spray dozens of times before it began to piss clear. Probably used more than half a can of brake cleaner. The leftovers in the catch can were pretty nasty:



- Allow few hours for the solvent to fully dry out.
- Spray some chain & cable lube in the same way as the brake cleaner. I sprayed bit by bit until I saw it come out the other end.
- I chose to use
Yeah, it's $20 a can. I've had this for a number of years and it is a very good lubricant and rust preventer. It's a favorite for bike chains and things like that.

Once it all went back together, the speedometer moved nice and smoothly! Woo hoo!

snobdds

Good write up...

I have done something similar...I took one out of a junk yard truck one time to experiment with . I put each end on a drill, with one drill being in reverse. Then ran a bunch of soapy dawn dish soap water through it to clean it up. Once dry I used Stihl bar and chain oil and put it into a babies medicine dispenser syringe. Then slowly put in the oil while the drill was moving the inside cable. The chain oil is super tacky and really didn't run out much. It has been working for the past 60,000 miles.

RustBucket

iTrader: (1)

Good idea on the bar and chain oil. Glad to hear that it has worked. I had trouble finding many threads where someone could confirm a certain lube had held up for a while.

I forgot to mention that I also used the drill method. I'm not sure if it made a big difference since my cleaner and my lubricant were very thin. But once I got the en dripping I chucked the output in a drill and spun it for a few seconds to encourage flow.

kpnalder1

I'm going to do this same thing today for the second time in 2 years. Can't remember the lube I used the first time but it only lasted about 15k miles. I have WD-40, rocknroll mtn bike chain lune for wet conditions, , 2 stroke premix oil, silicone apray lube, and 5 wt suspension oil. Out of all these which one do you think would work best to lube the cable after I clean it! Obviously the premix and suspension oil will be thicker and tougher to get down the cable. I was thinking of just using good ol WD-40 but wanted some input on this. Thanks!

pascoscout

Thicker lubricants, while harder to get in, will last longer. If you could remove that rubber plug all the way the best thing (in my opinion) would be to pump lithium grease in there until it came out the other end. Bar and chain lube would be a close second since its thick.

kpnalder1

Pascoscout, Sounds like maybe the mtn bike chain lube sounds like the ticket then out of all the stuff I have. It's thicker as it's for wet conditions and made to stay on the chain longer. What do you think?

millball

WD is a half-way decent penetrating solvent, but any lubricating qualities that it posesses are very temporary. Never use it to lube anything that you expect to stay lubed for any length of time.
WD-40 is little more than deodorised kerosene and it soon evaporates, leaving little or no lube or lasting rust protection behind.
I learned this the hard way years ago, when I thought that WD might be useful for laying up firearms.
Oil is oil and WD is not.
My preference for speedo lube is light wheel bearing grease containing moly, when the cable core can be removed from its housing to be cleaned and regreased.
On these Yota cables that cannot be dissasembled, one of the bike chain lubes that has an evaporating solvent component that leaves lube behind, might be the ticket.

kpnalder1

In the process of doing this now. Only thing I'm having trouble with is getting the cable to pull up out of the sheath to unseat the seal. My housing is plastic instead of the metal like the one above so I'm trying to be careful not to break it. Does it take quite a bit of force to pull the cable out?

I think I'll use the bike chain lube as it's pretty thick. Will probably take awhile to get it in the cable though....

pascoscout

Should work, just set up a regular schedule where you clean and lube it every few years.

kpnalder1

I think using the thicker lube will last better over the long run but what a PITA to put down the cable housing. I think it took me a 2 1/2 hrs to finish this little project. For anyone else doing this I found a quicker way to get the thicker lube in easier. Put enough water in a pot so the you can sit the bottle or container of whatever lube you're using in it without it becoming afloat and tipping over. Heat the water on the stove without the bottle in it and then take that pot of water out to the car. I actually heated it until almost boiling. Set the bottle in it and the hot water will make the fluid thinner makin it much much easier to get down the housing. Once I started doing this the process went much quicker. Speedo works much better now but is still a little twitchy before 25 mph which I can live with especially since a new cable is $100! And it's quiet again!

RustBucket

iTrader: (1)

This Boeshield has made the speedo rock solid at all speeds so far.

Gamefreakgc

I tried greasing my speedo cable today. However, on my 91 5-speed 4x4 I couldn't get any lube down the cable housing. I have a bell-shaped plastic housing that is sealed, and I couldn't get a drop of anything down there .


Just sharing for anyone who has that kind. I found an archived post that said basically it can't be lubed, you have to cut out the old one and modify the bracket to fit the new one in. It really is that complicated if you have the setup I have, there's not possible way to get it out.


Looks like I'm just gonna live with the waving wand and the noise...