Hi,
Yes I think you could try super glue but be very careful upon applying them as they are very thin and can run off to other places that you will not want it too. They are so clear that it’s very near impossible to follow the flow. One drop can turn into a flood in my experience of using those glues.


What you have going on with the gears is age of the material decomposing for the most part. Plastics are a petroleum product of molecules of a lattice structure as so do metals but metal has a grain structure whereas petrochemicals are more gaseous by nature.
The material has most like shrunk increasingly with time that accumulates internal stresses in the material until it micro cracks.
Originally the materials are made to a size that includes a press fit onto those shafts you are referencing as not turning except under certain conditions.

You will want to fill those micro cracks but it will not tighten the material back up.
What you will end up doing is creating more contact surface to engage the shaft.
That can be fine and dandy, if you have the space away from any other components that don’t have to spin freely.
In other words, you want to weld it to the shaft but you have to have room for a fillet material to engage the shafts surface.

In the case of the later electronic speedometers, 1985 on, the gears crumble and replacement is the only option. I made my own out of a piece of Delrin that has a better molecular structure than whatever junk stuff VDO or other vendors used in all the years of Volvo’s speedometers.
Plastics have evolved tremendously in the years since to be almost a miracle material in proper applications.

With your 1982 speedometer it has been like some of NASA’s space programs probes. It has gone farther than they ever intended.
As a fact with my 1978 speedometer the shafts wore out the housings journals.
Instrument clusters didn’t and still don’t come hermetically sealed today because their not mechanical at all.

Heck, they don’t even do headlights that way anymore.
Your headlights are still $10-15 for a swap out. My 1984’s four Beamer are free or a dollar in garage sales!

The newer headlights didn’t start cost much more to make than the originals back then either but marketing styles, over rules logic, if there’s is any?
The replacement bulbs in them don’t cost squat to make by comparison of glass and energy of the complete sealed beams.
Let me say …. they’re how much now? 😳. Duh? 🤔
Never mind how the hazed up or water filled the plastic housings get to be, before the bulbs burn out.


Yep, try super glue ….. carefully!
Nothing to lose as it’s not working already!

I peened the journals with an adjustable strength automatic center punch gadget and got a few more years.
The 1978 is probably 30 grand behind the actually full mileage but the speed part still works to the local stores.
I watch it as a reference but share my eyeballs with the two other gauges. Oil changes are color or time intervals. Todays oils are really good.

Phil