I've recently been posting a lot of questions about my car and am successfully fixing things. Now I have a question about my odometer, it will run the whole time driving, than another time won't work at all, every other gauge works. (It's rare the trip works I don't think it does at all)What is usually the cause of this and can it be difficult to figure out? I don't wanna rip it out and not know what I'm doing. Thanks

 

the usual cause of odometer failures is a broken tiny little plastic gear in the clockwork mechanism. but usually this causes it to stop reading, and stay broken.

 

So if it goes sometimes it's probably not that little gear?

 

Ok I don't know why it's not working,Anyone else
Recommendations or ideas

 

if its not mechanical, its electrical. the speedo outputs pulses to the odometer, which counts those pulses via a tiny motor and drives a chain of gears to divide down the miles.

could be a bad solder connection, or a flakey capacitor (not at all uncommon in 20+ year old electronics). but it could be a intermittent mechanical thing too, maybe only part of a tooth is missing, and sometimes it will engage, then go around a whole another circle (which might be a bunch of miles).

there's really no way to know without taking it apart and going from there.

 

When I got my car 5 years ago the odo was broken; hadn't worked in 7 years. I replaced the "little gear" and hurrah! it was working. But since then it has periods where it doesn't start moving until the car has been moving-sometimes a minute, sometimes 5 or 10 min. This happens only when the car has sat for overnight, especially bad in the cold winters we have here in Nor. Calif. Also, more likely to happen when the car was stopped and there are three of more tumblers being rotated.
I think it is a friction issue; I have had the odo out several times replacing the larger gear, and lubing the tumbler mechanism. I started out using graphite; that didn't help. I most recently used a silicone spray lube that seems to minimize the non-rotating issue. Also, be sure that the gears you replace don't spin on their shafts.

 

Have you been pushing the trip reset button lately?

 

That's what I think to , it sounds right in my case, there will be sometimes when it will want to roll over but it can't quite make it. I will eventually get to taking the odometer out and trying to figure out what's going on, it sucks cause I can't know how many actual miles is on it. I will will go to an imports shop in my town that's great with info on volvos and see if they can lead me where to get parts for the odometer.

 

Haha no trip reset button is broken, there's something missing it won't click in right.

 

Yep, time to open her up. Things won't go flying across the room when you do I promise.

 

I'll obviously just have to do it to find out , but I have no garage to work in and it snows/cold 24/7 pretty much most the year where I live, do not wanna do it freezing my *** off. So the whole gauge cluster will come out and I'm guessing the odo just unscrews, are the gears accessible right there or will I have to take off more? I can't find any good pictures to give me an idea or diagrams .

 

here's how you take apart the speedo assembly to get at the odometer mechanicals.
cleanflametrap.com

 

There is also Dave's site showing how it's done with the replacement parts if need be. Volvo 240 Odometer Repair

To take the cluster out is real easy. It is held on by four screws. Two on the left and two on the right. Therefore, remove the two blank square on the right (or the gauge bezel if you have a small gauge there instead) and you will see two screws.

The other two are under the headlight and dimmer **** plate. Pull off the ***** with force, pop off the plate and there may be an additional metal plate under that you should remove as well. Since you have a '92, you should have four wires going to the cluster, unless you have a tachometer in the cluster, the five wires. All have different connectors, so just take not of where they go, but it is pretty easy.

 

Mine worked intermittently like that before it finally stopped and it was the gear. No problems after replacing that gear.