First off let me pave the way by saying that I doubt anyone on this forum, possibly the world, could know less about cars than me...I have just began working on my 1982 240D after owning it for 5 years, and growing tired of shelling out money to auto mechanics I decided to get stingy and learn how to fix stuff myself...and got hooked! 27 years into life and found a great new hobby that I would NEVER be able to do without all the comradery and willingness to share knowledge found on this and other forums...you guys rock!

That being said I think I broke something:

Like I said an 82 240D, I took out my instrument cluster and cleaned my rheostat switch to restore light to my dash, and fixed the stuck odom with nothing more than a little bit of wiggleing the gears, it may get stuck again but the lights were actually my main priority at that juncture.

The problem is, while trying to get to the odom, I stripped the phillips head that holds the rectangular black speedo lead, I eventually got it off with some vice grips, pliers and a razor to shave the plastic, but in the process I did some "tapping" to the back of the speedo, not "banging", but some hard tapping...anyways I reassmeble the cluster and go for a test drive, now my speedo acts very sluggish, responds slowly to accel/deaccel and shows about 15 mph less than what I'm actually doing...

I've heard about calibrating, but should you do that everytime you remove the cluster, it was working just fine before. I'm wondering if I did lasting damage or did I not insert the speedo cable in all the way? Hopefully its something simple...thanks guys