Date:         Tue, 05 Sep 95 15:41:41 EST
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "ray hale" <ray.hale@santafe.cc.fl.us>
Subject:      speedo

          feeling more ambitious than is reasonably sane, we also
          replaced our defunct and dirty and dim speedo yesterday.  we
          had a good working speedo and cable from the '67 donor
          westy.  i climbed underneath, lea fed the new cable thru the
          disconnected parcel tray and down by the headlight shell
          inside.  it took several tries to find the correct position
          but it finally poked thru underneath.  i routed it properly
          along the undercarriage and cleaned up some wiring down
          there as well.  lea moved to the left front wheel and did
          the honors on the bearing cap and cotter pin reinstall.  we
          moved up to the interior once more, this time numbering the
          wires from both speedos so they matched when i pul;led them
          and attempted to reinstall.  didn't want to rely on color
          coding after 30 years but it turned out that they were
          original colors on both speedos, amazing.  the old unit came
          out with much wiggling.  it looked like the old spagetti
          bender's nightmare under there.  i cleaned up the wire
          routing as best as possible in the really awkward position i
          was in.  meanwhile lea was disassembling the chrome outer
          ring and glass on the new unit and cleaning and replacing
          bulbs.  the newer unit went into place much easier with the
          wires re-routed and i attached the wires according to the
          numbers we assigned.  when i came up for air i was impressed
          with the looks.  we cleaned up, went in for dinner and
          beers, and waited for darkness to fall.  about 8:30 pm we
          went for a ride and yes indeed the bulbs were bright!  all
          the idiots lights worked and we had an idea once again how
          fast we were going.  the problem is that now the other
          gauges sure look dirty in comparison, arrgg, more work, as
          always.  last week i complained to kevin murray that all
          this work was getting to me.  when was i gonna get to have
          some fun with my favorite vehicle?  to which he replied,
          "why, ray, you ARE having fun!"   right, i forgot.  i'm back
          ray