Speedometer Swap

rusty6 · Sep 18, 2018

I've finally got a working speedometer on the 52 Merc. By doing a swap from the 53 parts car. Not rocket science but it had some awkward fasteners to get at and it took a while. Better now than in the winter when my fingers would freeze up.

Mercury speedometer

DCM · Sep 18, 2018

Your's is an automatic I see, I have a 53 Monarch with an automatic,but the car does not look as good as the one you have.

dr sportster · Sep 18, 2018

What a nice dash board that is !

jimg.allentown · Sep 18, 2018

Hold on to the old one. They are repairable and a lot of parts interchange among even the different makes. Most speedometers of that era were made by King-Seeley. I repaired the one in my 1954 Packard. Still working.

rusty6 · Sep 18, 2018

(quoted from post at 07:53:55 09/18/18) Hold on to the old one. They are repairable and a lot of parts interchange among even the different makes. Most speedometers of that era were made by King-Seeley. I repaired the one in my 1954 Packard. Still working.

For sure I'm keeping it and yes, all the gauges except one say King Seeley.
DRsportster, I agree that the flight deck styling of the 52-53 Merc instrument panels is my favourite of any fifties car.
DCM, I'd like to see a picture of your Monarch. There is one of those here too. Not mine unfortunately. I passed up a chance to buy a good 53 Monarch a few years ago and still regret it.
Still got the M68 truck though.

coshoo · Sep 18, 2018

It looked like there was a panel behind the speedometer with actual gauges- but I don't see them on the re-assembled dashboard. What's up with that?

As far as checking your actual speed against the speedometer, "there's an app for that". Go to the app store on your smartphone (or someone's that you can borrow) and search for speedometer. I put on a free one for spraying so I can keep the right speed to put down the right amount of product, and it seems to be very accurate. Uses GPS to get your speed, and once you turn it on it reads out continuously.

As far as getting speedometer to read the correct speed, you'll probably need to get a different gear for the transmission end of the cable. There are probably Mercury boards similar to YT, and those guys will know what you need to do. Link to one of your videos in your first post, they will love it and will fall all over themselves trying to help.

rusty6 · Sep 18, 2018

(quoted from post at 10:34:28 09/18/18) It looked like there was a panel behind the speedometer with actual gauges- but I don't see them on the re-assembled dashboard. What's up with that?

As far as checking your actual speed against the speedometer, "there's an app for that".
As far as getting speedometer to read the correct speed, you'll probably need to get a different gear for the transmission end of the cable. There are probably Mercury boards similar to YT, and those guys will know what you need to do. Link to one of your videos in your first post, they will love it and will fall all over themselves trying to help.

I should not need to change gears in the transmission as I only changed the head in the instrument panel. Cable and transmission gears are all original.
The speedometer detaches from the rest of the gauges to work on it but once its all back together it looks like a single unit. I made a video almost two years ago showing the 52 speedometer and instruments disassembled as I worked on it.

jimg.allentown · Sep 18, 2018

Speedometers were standard in those days. 1000 revolutions of the cable per mile. One of the things that I did while I was working as a mechanic was calibrating taxi meters.

Speedometer Swap

rusty6

Well-known Member

DCM

Well-known Member

dr sportster

Well-known Member

jimg.allentown

Well-known Member

rusty6

Well-known Member

coshoo

Well-known Member

rusty6

Well-known Member

jimg.allentown

Well-known Member

Similar threads