W5x cable speedo drive to J160 electronic speedo drive

[oldeskewltoy]

This was originally written for the purchasers of the LEEN adapter who want to get their speedometers working with the use of the LEEN adapted J160. I realized that a tangent of this might be useful here because there has been a few threads on gear diameter and speedo inop in some cases.


The 2 USA purchasers of the first batch of LEEN adapters have developed a solution to the speedometer issue for those using Toyotas J160. 1st - both of us will likely be using either a 3.9, or possible a 3.7 final drive. Jesse, one of the LEEN adapter purchasers, has done EXTENSIVE research into speedometer driven gear mounting assemblies. His research showed that the basic configuration of the internal housing/part of the J160 electronic speed drive is the same as the W5x threaded speedo drive. Since I acquired the W5x speedo drives from a friend(thanks Johnny) I was the first to test this theory.

Here is a photo proving that



top unit is the J160, lower unit is W5x. (this photo taken AFTER modified)

I pulled the assembly from the J160 and the inspection went fine, I went to install it and it went in 75% and then it seemed to hang up. I cleaned the W5x version and checked it with my caliper and the size was the same, so I again went to install the W5x drive and again it hung up about 75% installed. I then looked carefully @ the driven gears themselves (group number part of part number 33403) and found the gear from the J160 to be smaller in overall diameter



Then the gear from the W5x



The next thought was to just swap the gears assemblies from one housing to the other. The problem here was the length of the J160 was shorter then the W5x so swapping them would not work, a cable could not easily been run because the J160 shaft doesn't extend out far enough to catch the cable.

I thought of machining the W5x gear down to the J160 diameter, but if you look again at the structure, the inside edges of the teeth would be nearing the inner structure and so we decided that wasn't an option.

When I studied the assemblies I noted that the WAY they were assembled was very similar small hole on the top side, shaft twice the holes diameter from the underside.

Having 2 W5x assemblies (ability to try and risk damaging something) we decided to try to remove the gear from the shaft and so swap shafts/gears. Using a 4mm DRIFT (NOT a PUNCH) a wide flat surface with a appropriate sized hole (we used a spare lower control arm nut, upside down) placed between the gear and the shaft of the housing - the nut acted like an anvil spreading out the force so as to not damage the plastic gear







As you can see, we were successful. The above photo shows which gear came on which shaft (in reference to comment under 1st photo)


The shaft is knurled and the shafts were swapped by simply CAREFULLY and ACCURATELY hammering on the shaft to drive it into the replacement gear.


Now, what if you aren't using a 3.7, or a 3.9, what other options are out there? Below is a list of all the different USA vehicles that use the same driven gear housing, part number 33404-22010, you might find entire replacements here,




OR you might look to change the drive gear as well as the driven gear. I know that one of the J160 drive gears is the same part number, so same part as one from a 1984 W5x. Part number 33481-14031. This pretty much means there are literally hundreds of combinations, you just have to match the drive, and driven gears and do the associated math to calculate the tire diameter to get the closest combination.

Back to the beginning... the 33-10 combination from the J160, in conjunction with using a 195/50/15 will split the difference between the 3.7, and the 3.9 so allowing us a 2.5% error either faster, or slower depending on our choice. 2.5% @ 60mph is + or - 1.7mph


Oh... forgot to add this photo

[wilbo666]

FYI there are 'large' and 'small' W5x speedo driven gear assemblies that are used to drive a cable speedo as well - I can't with 100% honesty state which vehicles come with the smaller or larger driven gears but I do know that it is the case from experience.

So it's likely there is a W5x cable driven arrangement that has the smaller OD gear that you require to run in a J160 - without swapping gears

Good guide for those that need to swap gears tho!

Cheers
Wilbo