Speedo Gear drive

[Varget22]

I am wondering if any of you guys have had to replace your speed gear drive units. I've had mine out and cleaned it and re-lubed and everything looked OK. It seems like a straight forward design and there doesn't seem like there is much than go wrong that would not be obvious. I'm asking because I've been chasing the bouncing needle issue. I replaced the cable with a new unit. I've swapped the unit out for a unit that came from a FJ1100 with 15k miles. The old original unit would bounce like crazy and be impossible to tell you what the speed is. Very annoying. When I had the original unit out the spindle that the needle rides on had a bunch of slop in it where it goes into the assembly. The 1100 unit had no slop and the movement was smooth with no slop. The newer unit works perfect until about 45mph then seems to hang there. Once you get to about 65 or 70 it jumps up to close to the correct speed and moves around a little but looks pretty good. After a bit it will start to bounce some and settle down and after a bit it will start to bounce again. A little bit of bouncing is OK but the part about it hanging at about 45 is the weird thing. I'm wondering if there is something screwy going on in the gear drive unit? Ant ideas? Thanks.

[Varget22]

Well I got it figured out. I did some searching on some old posts and something in a couple of posts struck me. WHACK! They talked about how the instrument cluster is very sensitive to vibration. And warned about doing anything to tighten up the mounts on the instrument cluster. Oh crap, I remember doing this 4 or so years ago. I had taken the metal spacers out of the rubber bushings and shortened them with a file to tighten up the mounts. I figured they were just worn out and needed a little help. WRONG! They are supposed to be that way. I went to the local hardware store with one of these bushings in hand and found some that were as deep or slightly longer than the depth of the rubber bushings. Put it all back together and no more bouncing needles. This has been driving me nuts for a long time now. The speedo needle climbs nice and smooth with nu hesitation. 25..35..45..55..65..75..85..95..100..110...120...135....oops I may have gotten caried away. I did use a GPS to check the accuracy and it was the nornal 5 to 8mph off. I can easily live with that as long as the needle is not bouncing.