It's nice when everything works out. Like on my 91 5 Spd that I rebuilt the complete front and rear suspension. Even got my 17 yr old son to make a Volvo strut tool out of two sockets in his High School shop class to tighten the front top strut nuts. Original ride height. I've never seen that on a 240 before.
Now my sons 90 automatic is a different story. The odometer stops one day, OK the gear most likely. A few months later the speedo becomes erratic. It might just drop off or come to life. Sometimes a rap to the dash moves it. I think the capacitors or the sender/connector a bad solder joint. It also is a little sluggish from second to third gear since we've bought it off Ebay year and a half ago.
So lets fix it all. Buy a new Odometer gear, get some background info off the boards for the Speedo and a new filter and gasket for the tranny.
Messy stuff first. tranny drain plug out, dipstick tube disconnects without any problem, pan off, filter in and reassemble. Smooth as silk no problems no big chunks or extremely heavy buildup in pan. Normal signs of wear for 24 year old 240 AW70 tranny. Done.
Remove gauge cluster. Slide it out look in and see the dreaded Tach wire. Reach in and disconnect the only five wires. The full circle clip the half circle clip the speedo 90 degree clip one spade clip at the bottom passenger side and one spade clip midway up more to the drivers side. I wrap the Tach cable around the wire loom to keep it separate.
Speedo out new gear in (old one missing tooth).
I decide to do some testing. I open the sender unit box in the trunk and check for resistance and get 2.8 Ohms and consider this OK. I hook a 5 volt ac adapter to the leads to the speedo with a jumper in the lower flex fuse jacks and get no movement whatsoever at the speedo.
I reinstall the gauge cluster loosely to see what happens. Turn the key to second detente and get no fuel or temp gauge movement, and the up-shift arrow light comes on. It starts and runs fine. No speedo no Odometer no temp or fuel, shift light on. Clock works turn signals work.
I do this several times and decide lets go for a short ride close to home.
Shift light comes on at start-up. If I shut it off from shift lever button it does not go into fourth. If I turn switch on and light arrow it shifts into fourth. Goes through the other gears fine but will not shift into fourth unless I turn on shift arrow indicator. Still no speedo or odometer.
Now 20 minutes and heading for home, the battery light starts to glimmer and the speedo has a short lived pulse. I notice that now 20 minutes in the speedo quivers around the correct speed when I turn ON the shift arrow light which shifts me into fourth but dies when I turn the shift arrow light off which drops me into third. And the battery light is still glowing. Go Figure.
So I say shift arrow is working backwards. Goes on when running in fourth and off downshifts to third.
I broke the whole Speedo set somehow or maybe the drive motor.
Or did I mix up the tach wire and fry the unit.
The most glaring fault to me is the second spade plug at the upper drivers side. There are only two spade plugs. The higher one and the lower one. One definitely goes at the lower drivers side there is only one plug there. I did not mix the high and low wires up. The higher plug can go in two places on the board though, but the spades are one above the other and they seem to be connected like a U soldered to the board. I did not realize this when I disconnected the wire. After 2 or 3 original attempts at ignition on I switched this wire from the high to low terminal of that U shaped jack and back no change.
Where do I go from here. New cluster? Sell the car at a huge loss. I can not just store it. It has about 150K on it and I got it for $2300.00 a good deal I think. It's in nice shape.
Just nice when things go good.