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Replacing the Speedometer Cable
| On the trip to the 2005 Compout at Parts
Obsolete I hit some road debris. At the
next gas stop, I noticed that the speedometer was not working.
I stopped in Eugene to see fellow 912 owner Jaems Thomsen and to meet
his mechanic, Walt, who jacked up the car and said that the
speedometer take-off on the transmission was twisted. He disconnected
the takeoff and pulled the end of the cable out of the sheath. The
twisted takeoff had kinked the sheath near the end of the cable which
caused the cable to break.
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| The cable is pulled out the back of the car because the diameter of
the connector at the front is much smaller than at the rear. The
cable is screwed to the speedometer, feeds through a hole in the
trunk, behind the wooden plate at the driver's feet, through the
tunnel and out the back to the take-off on the transmission.
Remove both ends of the cable, the seat, the carpet over the tunel,
the gearshift, emergency brake handle, and the rear access cover. I
like to remove the steering wheel as well which is easy with the
Momo wheel.
Feed the speedo cable from the rear tunnel access hole. You can see
the old speedometer cable with the ridges on it looping over the right
hand heater cables. The cable will hang up along the way but it is
easy to free until the end gets to the area of the shift lever.
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| There are two bent metal clips that hold the cable to the side of the
tunnel. One is shown here with access under the transmission shift
lever and the other under the emergency brake handle.
I was able to feed the cable out the back of the car from the access
panel to the first clip under the transmission shift linkage.
Then the clip by the shift lever is opened up, the cable moved to the
emergency brake and that clip opened and the cable was worked the rest
of the way to the back.
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| Here the old cable is coming out of the car.
You can see the kink in the sheath that caused the cable to break.
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| Here you can see that the new cable is longer than the old one. The
extra length is accommodated in the trunk.
The Porsche cable is also available, but it has some extra padding
around the sheath and is significantly more difficult to install.
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| I wrapped some masking tape around the end of the cable so I would not
have to fight the ferrule as the cable was fed into the back. A new
boot was also installed on the cable end before installation. The boot
inner diameter is smaller than the attachment nut and would be very
difficult to install later.
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| Here is the speedometer cable feeding from the tunnel to the hole in the
trunk.
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| Once the cable is in the trunk, we can attach the rear end to the
transmission take-off, install the boot, adjust the position in the
foot well, remove the masking tape and connect the cable to the
speedometer. There is a grommet with a diagonal hole that holds the
cable in the hole though the trunk and seals the hole. I got a new
one of these grommets but reused the old one. The new one is too large
for the hole.
Now you can replace the gear shift, emergency brake handle, foot
board, access panel, carpet and seats, put the car back on it's feet
and go for a test drive to see how well you did.
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Last modified: Sun, 10 Jul 2005
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