Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Following your excellent advice I have ordered a new speedo cable. The old one just pulled out of it`s sleeve when I unscrewed the knurled thingy on the back of the speedo head. Should it be secured at the gearbox end? If so, how?
Thanks,
Jim

Nope, it's not supposed to be secured at either end. It just fits in to a square receiver as most speedo cables are designed this way. Put it on the floor and roll it to see if it has any kinks in it. Also, if the cable housing is damaged, that can cause the cable to bind resulting in a jumping needle. The other end is actually a right angle gear drive. If this is damaged, it will also cause the needle to bounce. You might want to crawl under the car and see if you can remove this also, just for inspection. Might require draining the gearbox though. If you do drain the box, take it easy when you re-install the plug (I didn't). Just get it snug.

Frank Howard
Minneapolis
'71 S4 SE

Jim - I had 2 problems with my speedo cable. The first was the the gears inside the speedo itself were sticky and binding. A rebuild solved it. Second - the square end of the cable sheared off inside the right angle drive on the side of the tranny. (Probably caused by #1 problem). When it sheared off, it also broke the gear in the right angle drive. So I ended up replacing both the cable and the angle drive. I tried to rebuild the angle drive by grinding off the tabs holding the cover plate in place (which was easy to do with a dremel tool and would have worked!) - but the inside gear was messed up. I have this affliction where I always take everything apart to see why it's broken. Sometimes I get lucky and am able to fix it easily.

To see if your speedo gears are binding, simply attach the cable to the speedo, disconnect it from your right angle drive and then chuck the square end into a drill. and power up your drill! Works every time!

Good luck
Paul