Road trip! ... and broken speedometer

Hi folks.

I had to make a sudden business trip to Lawrence, KS. I spent last weekend tuning the B, adjusting the valves, and generally reversing entropy, so I figured "why not?" and took the B on this 1300 mile cruise. 1300 miles in three days. Worn cam, no overdrive, 90 degree weather in spots.. the works. Damn I love this car!

Other than the heat it's been fun, and the B behaved well, however last night the speedometer quit suddenly. (Both speedometer and odometers). My B is a '76, which has the service mileage odometer thingie under the hood. Is there a splitter or some kind of gear box that lets the transmission drive both of these?

Any of you guy's in the Lawrence KS area? I'm going to be here about 3 weeks, I think. Might be fun to grab a beer or some dinner :-)

V.

I don't know why you could not get a longer speedo cable and just bypass the Service Interval Box.

There's only one speedo cable going to it as far a I could see today. Are there two cables to the box and I missed it? If so, I'll pull the box.

V.

If your speed is truly your only concern, and if you have an iPhone, there's a speed-o-meter app that works great (at least as a temporary "fix). :)

The likelyhood is that one of your cables broke, just buy a cable from a later car and bypass the box, you don't need it.

I believe there is one cable in and another one that goes out to the transmission. You could bypass the service deal with the longer cable if that is the problem or maybe just replace the upper or lower cable. Victoria British is based in Kansas,maybe a road trip to get a new cable is in order?

LOL.. true.. I have a Droid, with the GPS which is the only way I could find this place.. Still, would be nice to have everything working. For the last leg of the trip I used the Tachometer. 3500 RPM is about 55, 4000 is about 70-ish. Not being the fastest car on the highway wasn't hard, as I don't like to run for long periods over 4000 RPM

V.

OK... Been an interesting morning.

I pulled the service interval box - the input cable is UNDER it - passes strait through. Not a whole lot in there to break, and indeed the box is OK, turns freely, and the coupling from the input to the output is one solid strait-through piece of metal. That's not the problem.

When I tried to turn the cable from the box to the speedo, it wouldn't turn. OK, problem is either the speedo or the cable. Pulled the speedo - turn the cable, it turns freely. The cable is ok. Try to turn the speedo, it's frozen solid.

Pulled the speedo apart, a little penetrating oil, and in five minutes it's turning freely. Cleaned the drive, oiled and checked everything, and as far as I can tell at this point the speedo should be OK now.

Try to turn the cable going down to the transmission, it feels springy, like the far end is engaged and the center part is free to turn. I put the whole thing back together, took it around the block, still no speedometer.

So... what are the odds that the frozen speedometer caused a gear at the transmission end to strip? the cable at the lower end to break? neither? both?

Moss says that none of the drive gears are available anymore. If it IS a part that isn't available, means finding a shop in the Lawrence Kansas area (yes, I'm willing to travel a bit if I need to from here if necessary) that might be able to find the part on a parts car or in their stock or something.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks :-)

V.

There's a guy in Kansas City that always has parts and cars advertised on craigslist. I think it's Joes British Parts or something like that. Worth a shot and close by.

Vincent,
Cable to tranny shouldn't spin freely, it turns as the car moves.

Good job on getting the speedo turning.

It's fixed! It turned out to be that when the speedometer froze, the 90 degree drive down at the transmission stripped, so even though the speedo was fixed, it still didn't work.

MANY MANY THANKS to Bill Davidson and the Kansas City MG Car Club. Bill is a great guy, a fantastic mechanic, and gave up part of his Sunday to help me with this, and had a spare 90 degree drive on hand! It doesn't get any better than this - one MG enthusiast helping another enthusiast. His cars are awesome.

Thanks also to you folks on the board for your help and suggestions, both for this problem and others I've asked about in the past.

Warmest regards,

Vinny