Removing needles from speedometer

Hi

I'm wanting to convert my speedo on my landrover freelander 1 (1999) which is imported to read in MPH. I have bought a second hand instrument cluster and and I was going to take the speed fascia off it and change it for the one which is currently installed in the car.

Can anybody see any problem with this plan and would anybody know how to safely remove the speedometer needle so that I may release the existing fascia.

Many thanks in advance for any help,

Craige

I took the needles off a fiesta once to put on a white backing. To cut a long story short i run out of petrol gauge said there was quarter a tank and speedo was reading 30mph doing 45mph. So i wouldn't

craigebevil said:

Hi

I'm wanting to convert my speedo on my landrover freelander 1 (1999) which is imported to read in MPH. I have bought a second hand instrument cluster and and I was going to take the speed fascia off it and change it for the one which is currently installed in the car.

Can anybody see any problem with this plan and would anybody know how to safely remove the speedometer needle so that I may release the existing fascia.

Many thanks in advance for any help,

Craige

Click to expand...

You can't just change the face plate to correct an import as it's calibrated differently. Just change whole assembly over!!

to the best of my knowledge, the needles are glued to the end of the pin. Would be wary of wrecking the entire mechanism though, won't take much as they are just tiny little coil meters inside.

what about a little triangle sticker or similar on the existing face plate at the key speeds (30,50,70)

good luck though.

I dont think they are glued on. Usually you just ping them off. Lever from the face of the speedo and up. Be careful though.

They do come off....use a teaspoon to lever them up.
However, the mechanisms are VERY delicate, and you need to be 100% sure that you put the needle back on the pin at exactly the right position. Its possible if you take your time.

However, as touched on above, the spacing of the scale on the speedo faces might not be the same between the mph and kph versions, which would give a false reading.

craigebevil said:

Hi

I'm wanting to convert my speedo on my landrover freelander 1 (1999) which is imported to read in MPH. I have bought a second hand instrument cluster and and I was going to take the speed fascia off it and change it for the one which is currently installed in the car.

Can anybody see any problem with this plan and would anybody know how to safely remove the speedometer needle so that I may release the existing fascia.

Many thanks in advance for any help,

Craige

Click to expand...

it may be possible to change the speedo facia but if the mileage reading is set in km it would be wrong and maybe fraudulant

When we moved back to the UK after many years in Ireland, we had to re-register a Mitsubishi Colt with a "Metric" instrument cluster. As the car was subject to an MOT and would have failed because the speedo was showing only Km's, I bought a full cluster from a UK breaker. The Odometer was showing a higher mileage than the converted Km's so I did a Google for "Mileage correction" and sent the replacement cluster off. The Odometer was reset to the correct figure and it cost, from memory, £25. Add the cost of the cluster from the breaker, £25-it worked out at £50 for the complete swap with no p**sing around.
As has been posted, the mechanisms are very flimsy and it's dead easy to cause it to read incorrectly.
Another word of caution...on most modern cars where the body ecu controls the electrical systems, the Odometer reading is stored in two places, (a) an Eprom in the cluster and (b) in the body ecu. If the cluster or body ecu is changed, the Odometer will change to the HIGHEST stored figure. A way around this is to fit a cluster with a lower Odometer reading than your own because it will update to the higher BCU stored value, which is o.k. I am not too sure of the complexity of the F/L system..I have been far too busy with other things !!

Thanks for the advice everybody! Should I replace the entire instrument cluster, does anybody know if there would be any consequences e.g. engine management system locking down the car etc. and needing to be unlocked by a garage

Regards

Craige

Apart from Odometer reading issue, it will be just "Plug & Play".
Remember of course to get the same version-i.e. Petrol or Diesel !!!!

In a few bosch systems i have been thinkering with before. Its a VIN code in the speedo eeprom. Without change it will work as usual. But it wont show the milage(-------).

You can then either program the eeprom with a new VIN# or flash a "virgin" dump(new clusters firmware) and mate it with diagnostics software. Or offcourse you can buy a new speedo and get a dealer to program it(my guess its gonna be expencive).