Speedometer repair/calibration

[Roberte]

I have a 63 austin healey with a smiths speedometer . I would like to know of a shop that does calibration/ repair of speedometers/ angle drives. I live in iowa.

Robert

 

[John Kuzman]

https://www.nisonger.com/index.htm

 

[Bob_Spidell]

Also consider Mo-Ma (https://www.manta.com/c/mm57mlj/mo-ma) or West Valley Instruments (https://westvalleyinstruments.com). All three are good.

 

[RandyHicks]

I just had my 100M instruments cleaned and recalibrated by West Valley. Great work!

Mo-Ma was never able to calibrate my BJ8 speedo even after 3 attempts. I'll go back to West Valley, Morris Mintz (formally MO of Mo-MA) in a flash.

 

[John_Progess]

I just finished a MGA restoration and had MOMA repair my instruments. The speedo and tach do not work and it only took them 10 months to do the work! Have a good day!

 

[Bob_Spidell]

My experience with MoMa--they rebuilt a safety gauge for our BN2--was satisfactory, but that was several years ago. Sounds like they've gone downhill.

 

[steveg]

I had several positive interactions with Nisonger including having them make a hybrid Healey-Toyota cable.
They have very explicit instructions for counting the cable revs pushing the car through 52'-9.5"

Peter Roses had his speedo re-calibrated by West Valley within the last year and they turned it around in a week. Nisonger took a lot longer.

Had a quality-control issue with MoMa 10 years ago and got a big dose of attitude when I brought it up.

Made this speedo calibration tool which has been used on three cars to date:

 

[Bob_Spidell]

I give up--how does the calibration tool work?

 

[John Turney]

I give up--how does the calibration tool work?

The wheel goes on the end of the speedometer cable in place of the speedometer. The wire is a pointer. Roll the car forward 52.8 ft (1/100 mi. - 52'-9.5") and count the number of turns the speedometer cable makes. The pointer makes it easier to see the tenths of a turn. Multiply by 100 and that's the number of turns/mile.

 

[Bob_Spidell]

Cool, thanks.

 

[TodE]

John,

Did post instructions on how you built your calibration tool? Good job! Getting ready to send my speedo off to Nisonger.

Thanks in advance.
Tod

 

[richberman]

The wheel goes on the end of the speedometer cable in place of the speedometer. The wire is a pointer. Roll the car forward 52.8 ft (1/100 mi. - 52'-9.5") and count the number of turns the speedometer cable makes. The pointer makes it easier to see the tenths of a turn. Multiply by 100 and that's the number of turns/mile.

Steve/John,
Why do you need to push the car, won't first gear do? And can you post how to build that tool?

 

[steveg]

The center hub is a piece of aluminum rod long enough to accommodate the square end of the cable and the screw holding the disc on. Half is tapped for that screw. A hole is drilled at right angles for the allen setscrew that holds the hub to the cable end. The disc is a piece of aluminum flashing. The circle is art downloaded from wiki images - circle divided into 10ths - glued to disc with spray adhesive. Number the gradations 0 - 9 counter-clockwise (disc rotates clockwise). The pointer is made from coat hanger wire.

Remove the speedo, tape the pointer to the cable housing with duct tape. Loosen the disc screw and adjust position of disc at zero.

Not shown - I used a piece of coat hanger wire taped to the front bumper as a pointer to the ground and pieces of masking tape on the pavement marked at 52'-9.5".

Nisonger says it's important to push the car by hand through this distance - some issue with the diff, I forget. Do it 3 times and average the results. IMHO this is a 2-person job so you may have to recruit a "Dreaded Assistant".

 

[John Turney]

Steve/John,
Why do you need to push the car, won't first gear do? And can you post how to build that tool?

It's hard to move the car exactly 52.8' by driving, and because of gear slop, you can't back up and be accurate. Yes, do 3 times and average.

 

[TimK]

Somebody posted on the forum about fixing angle drives with spare parts. It's cheaper to buy a new one from Moss than have a broken one fixed by a professional

 

[Bob_Spidell]

Somebody posted on the forum about fixing angle drives with spare parts. It's cheaper to buy a new one from Moss than have a broken one fixed by a professional

Might have been me. My dad and I rebuilt our BN2's angle drive with some parts from an incomplete donor (Healey people are incredibly generous). Cost us a couple hours; new one from Moss is around $260 last I checked.

 

[John Turney]

Bob,

That's because it was for a BN2. For a BN4 - BJ8, it's $40.