Sticky speedo

[CatmanDoes]

Another minor issue (not having a lot of luck here!). My speedo needle doesn't want to move, showing 0mph for a while and suddenly it'll "wake up". The period of time it takes to wake up seems proportional to the time the vehicle has been left standing. If it hasn't been used for a few days the speedo takes about 5mins of driving before it kicks in. However if I've driven it to the shops, leave the vehicle for about 30 mins to an hour the speedo works straight away. Once the speedo is working it works perfectly (at least appears to!).

Will pulling it out the dash and giving it a bit of WD40 be a good idea? Or am I looking at some bad electrical connection? I was wondering if there's some sort of "switch speedo-on" relay that's getting a bit old?

[andy_enuff]

Sounds like the needle is pushed too far back on to the spindle or the face plat is peeling off? Have you changed the face plate behind the needle at all recently? Might be worth taking it out of the dash and ever so slightly edging the neeld back off the spindle. I had a similar problem when I changed my faceplates and had pushed the needle back on too far and it was rubbing on the faceplateat the 0mph end of the scale...

[CatmanDoes]

Thanks for the reply. I've not touched it but one of the previous owners certainly had a play with the whole dash unit. The needle does not seem to rest on the pin and looks like it's resting just around 5mph. From what I can see the back face isn't peeling or interfering.

[darrenhopper]

Faceplate on my truck was warped in between the odometer cut-out & the trip meter cutout so the needle would get stuck in two spots.

I cut away the warped bit of plastic & put in a little black electrical tape.
Worked fine until the whole lot was replaced for a mechanical unit.

[NiftyNev]

Check the plug for the speedo sensor on gearbox.

Nev