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It seems the cable driver in a box is still a very popular method. $350 price range is not bad. There is room for this price to come down, but it will require some competition
Interesting to see this thread. When I was running stock gauges in my squarebody swap, I made this unit to drive the speedo. It clips in place like the stock cable does and uses a stepper motor to drive the speedo. I made an arduino based unit to read the 4000ppm signal from the PCM and to drive the stepper motor.
I'd like to see/learn more about this set up. Being able to do this on a C10 would be a life saver as the OE 91-92 Suburban clusters are getting pricey and this would allow you to keep the factory cluster if you want too.
Let me first say, I know I have a long way to go to equal the quality of workmanship at Redline. But I've made a half decent video on Youtube of getting started by gutting a Dolphin brand speedometer and fitting it to my C10 cluster. I installed the dolphin in my truck to test and play with the calibration for about an hour before I took it apart. This is the first time to do this, so lots of learning still to do on my part, like get some real stand-offs for mounting. Maybe in a couple more months, I'll have yet another video with some more improvement. I don't yet have a video made of testing the initial prototype in the truck, it was getting dark out. Hopefully in the next couple days.
I found this discussion a year ago, and read every post. I decided to try and build my own speedo drive motor. It has been a fun and challenging project. I made this video of my ’47 speedo next to the ’90 speedo.
So, yes, it can be done. You are probably better off just buying an off the shelf solution. If you like to tinker and want to build your own then go for it!
You won’t hear it in my truck! When I had the unit on the test bench there was quite a bit of noise. I added rubber grommets where the standoffs connect to the plate to help isolate the mechanical connection. That didn’t do much, so I thought about how it would be in a vehicle. On the bench the unit was supported by the bottom of the speedometer and the back of the motor. In a vehicle the speedometer would be screwed to the dash with the motor hanging off the back. I propped the speedo up so that the motor was not touching the bench and the noise was substantially reduced. I just checked again and it seems most of the noise goes away when I touch the speedometer housing. I think some foam tape on the speedometer housing will work to dampen the sound. Thanks for the question Nick_R_23.
It's been a while since I've been on here. I've studied a bit more as I get time. I did buy a Dolphin (https://www.dolphingauges.com/) Speedo and tore it open to see how they were doing it. VID29-02 Stepper motor with no driving chip... posted photos of the board on Twitter. (
) This doesn't seem right. I didn't even se an dual H-bridge chip. Anyway, the reason I'm still looking into that idea is because it could be used for any speedo for any vehicle with a pulsed transmission output.
Types that I've thought are possible or already in use.
-1. Mechanical - isn't that why we are here, looking for other solutions, no thank you
1. Motor in a box - that drives your mechanical speedometer. I'm not a fan of this principle, but I like how it has been managed. Congrats to those who've made it work - impressive @gjestico .
2. Air core motor - 80s and 90s technology that I've heard is not to most reliable? or precise? - I think this would be my favorite option if still supported by anyone. It's not a motor, it's an analog device (not sure what to really call it). Best part is, once set, it's repeatable
3. Stepper motor - The tiny ones you can find on ebay/amazon for a few bucks each that requires a microcontroller and driving chip that seems to only be made by companies that will only deal with companies with serious money... maybe I'm not entirely accurate on this, but... I haven't found jack
4. Hobby servo motor? Has anyone tried this? 50Hz (20ms) Pulse width modulation with a 1 to 2 ms pulse on time for positioning. This is my current favorite option. I have a Velocio(.net) PLC that cost me $50 and I'm (slowly) working on an idea to test hobby servo with the velocio. The velocio is able to read about any transmission pulse signal, scale that signal and feed it to the hobby servo, scale that to anything. The only unknown is durability. But that could easily be swapped with another servo of another brand and rescaled.
So I love the hobby servo option because they use a fairly standard footprint between servos. The velocio has an option for free "HMI" software, and USB to the device. So anyone reading this could learn to connect and adjust the "scaling" to make it match your vehicle. This leaves mounting the servo up to you. If I make progress on this, I will update here.
I'm posting this as an update and to know if anyone has considered a hobby servo as an option? Microcontollers (like Arduino) or the Velocio PLC are great options. I like the Velocio because I'm planning on controlling more than just the speedometer with the same unit. May I have something sooner than later.
Forgot to add, I would also like to do something with the mechanical odometer. I think stepper motor (even NEMA stepper) is fine for this as it's not a position thing and who really care if the odometer reading is to the .000001 accuracy.
My point here would be, no one on the planet offers an aftermarket mechanical odometer anything. Only OEM style replacement for the OEM cluster... driven by OEM mechanical.
09-18-2020 | 07:34 AM
