'86 300E odometer broken

The odometer on my 300E has stopped working again. The first time this happened I took it apart and found the shaft that holds all the numbers had shifted to the right, which disengaged the gear that rotates the shaft. The gear itself seemed to be held firmly to the shaft, but it no longer meshed with the gear that drives it. My original fix involved pushing the shaft back into place so the gears would engage again. This was 5,000 miles ago.

I reviewed the archives and found several posts with similar problems. I could not tell if the fix for these would work for my "disengaged shaft" problem. One fix involved using Loctite Sleeve Retainer #620. Would I be able to place beads of this at a point on the shaft to prevent it from shifting and disengage again?
A local speedo repair shop has quoted $75 to fix the problem which involves a rebuild. Any ideas?

-Thanks-

Blake

Greetings Blake,

I had the exact same problem with my odometer. I have the VDO odometer from a 1970 220 (W115). The wheel at the end of the row of numbers no longer rotated with the axle.

Since the wheel was metal, I used a soldering iron and 'tinned' the inside of the wheel where the pressure sleeve was. This effectively made the hole smaller so it could grab the axle again. It was so tight, I had to _carefully_ tap on the axle to put it back into place.

It worked quite nicely, but I'm fully expecting it to slip in a year or two.

With my odometer, I can't think of a good way of applying loc-tite to the wheel since all the numbers are so tightly packed within the frame. I guess you could use a tiny drill or Dremmel to cut an access window in the frame so you can apply the loc-tite after it's assembled.

Skrunch.

[lewise]

Hi,

Just curious, but I had this happen on my '86 shortly after I bought it. Did you happen to push the "reset" button while the car was moving? I don't know how true it is, but I was told by the folks at American Service center,(local dealer) never to do this on an MB as it would jump the odometer off it's track. They quoted an outrageous price to fix it as well, but beleive it or not what worked was simple pushing the reset button again while the car was sitting still. It's been working for 6 years now. Heck what do you have to loose.


Good luck
Evan

Mine doesn't have a reset button that you push. It has a knob that you rotate which 'collects' all the trip numbers and aligns them. You stop rotating when everything reaches 0.

Although I've taken mine apart and inspected it, you bring up an interesting point about resetting while the car is in motion. I know the problem with the drive wheel slipping can not be fixed by a simple press of the reset button, but perhaps we could have prevented loosening the wheel by _not_ resetting the car while in motion. I'll have to look at that next time.

Anyway, congratulations on your fix. It's always good to hear DIY'ers avoiding dealers trying to rip you off.

Skrunch.