Speedo cable to short..

[festiva208]

Ok here's the deal. I bought the car off of a guy who had a couple festy's. The car i have, originally had the gauge cluster with the tach on it. Well he wanted that one for one of his other cars, and gave me just a regular cluster with no tach. When trying to hook the speedo cable into the cluster, it was not long enough. I even disconnected it from the tranny and tried that way, and tried routing it different ways. There was just NO slack at all to get that cable to fit into both ends. Do the tach clusters have a shorter cable or whats the deal? Any info would be appreciated, Thanks!

[GenevaDirt]

same length....just have to route the cable the right way depending on if you have a tach speedo or just a speedo.

[festiva208]

hmm interesting. I routed it to give me the most amount of play as possible. even then that cable was pulled TIGHT and still wasnt long enough. Guess i'll try it again tomorrow. thanks geneva!

[The_Collector]

my stock cluster didn't have a tach on it and the cable came right through the center of the steel the column bolts to, I had to back it out and route it around the right side of the steel to get it to work with the tach cluster.

[big_ty2003]

you have to route it through the middle of the square metal support behind where the cluster sits. Chances are if it had a tach cluster it is coming out on the right of said metal support. You need to fish it back a little and go right through the middle of the support then you should be good to go.

Here is a link with some pictures, you would just be going backwards from the bottom of the list to the top...

http://www.clubprotege.com/wil/howto/tachometer/index.htm

I hope you didn't yank and pull on the speedo cable when you were trying to connect it. That would have kinked it permanently, which means you will have to buy a new one. I know because I was a dummy and did this and just had to replace the cable.


P.S. Next time to avoid harrasment do a search before you ask a question just make sure you use 4 letter words and above. It wont search words that are under 4 letters.
(for example search ---> speedo cable short) That is what I just searched to get the link above for you.

[angrygocart]

A friend who has done the swap recommended to disconnect it from the tranny to give more slack to pull and disconnect/reconnect the cluster. And he stated that they are routed different as stated in the other posts.

[Studebaker]

I think the auto trans cable is longer than a standard trans cable.

Good luck with it

David

[ejp2fast]

I think the auto trans cable is longer than a standard trans cable.

Good luck with it

David

I don't think actual length is the different, but the sometimes the housing needs to be trimmed:

when i bought my automatic car the speedo was broken.... i got another speedo from a manual car, and the speedo didn't want to go into the cluster and i had to trim the cable housing (not spring that turns, but the sleeve) at where it connected to the instrument cluster back a little so that MORE of the square spring connection could go into the female connector on the instrument cluster.

Since then, i've dropped in a 5spd, and still works fine.....