Speedometer works. At least I think it does; I don’t really know because the stupid bus engine won’t stay running well enough for me to drive around, but the speedo needle moves when I spin the wheel! I took a break from the somewhat frustrating work of getting the engine to idle, and did a quick little project to get the speedo working.
You’ll notice the picture above is showing 5 miles per hour. Thats pretty good, but I really wanted to show 10 – so I stood there spinning the left front tire as fast as I could, and then quickly grabbed the camera to take a pic of the speedometer… but I’m using a “fancy” camera that takes “nice” pictures – whatever, the point is I couldn’t get the thing to focus fast enough to take a picture before the speed went down to 5mph. You’ll just have to believe me… it was at 10…
To get to this point, I spent an hour trying to feed the cable through the dash parcel tray, through a hole in the front of the bus, along the bottom frame, and through a hole in the middle of the driver’s side front wheel spindle. Whew, finally got that done – but when I jack up the wheel and spin it, the cable doesn’t move – it’s this little metal cable that is supposed to spin with the wheel, but its not moving! I’m pissed – yet another bus project that doesn’t go as planned – I put the stupid cable in the stupid hole, why doesn’t it work! Oh wait, I just re-read the instructions, and I have to put the cable through the wheel dust cap before it spins – ok NOW it spins. Success! The bus now functions slightly better than it did this morning, and the speedo should help me know when to shift gears if/when I can actually get the thing on the road. Another project done!
Drew – you are making progress! I am amazed at how easily you learned to do all this work yourself. Tommy Hanson, who commented on your blog, is my late husband Bill’s uncle. He is taking some small engine repair classes at his local community college this Fall. He likes to fix things too! He lives on the lake outside Little Rock.
Carla