After behaving itself impeccably the weekend before last, on my trip to the NABD Rally and other places, my Elefant disgraced itself last week by deciding that it no longer wanted to let me know how fast I was going.
Initial suspect was the speedo cable, since that’s normally the cause of this kind of problem. I phoned up Venhill shortly after I got to work, but (fortunately, as it turned out) they denied knowing the details of this cable, despite me having ordered one previously, so I’d have to send my old one in so I could make a copy.
I never got round to checking the cable until the weekend, when the front wheel was off anyway to get new tyres put on (as well as chain and sprockets, and fitting the Öhlins-spring equipped shock that I’d had lying around for ages) . The cable’s fine: spinning it by hand makes the speedo needle flick. Next thing to check was the speedo drive, which turned out to be very stiff. A bit of cleaning revealed that a stone had got caught and jammed the mechanism.
Problem solved… but when I rode away from getting the work done, I did so at an indicated 0 mph. Bugger.
Further investigation this evening reveals that the metal drive ring in the wheel has worn down the tangs on the plastic ring in the speedo gearbox. I’ve bodged it for now, but who knows how long it’ll last… looks like I’ll have to get a new one, but where from?
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