Odometer gears

[sideshowbob]

Recently my odometer has stopped working. Had similar with my E30. So I am preparing to strip down instrument cluster and replace gears.
From other postings it appears there are two gear options. As I do not want to strip down and then identify gears I thought I would order hopefully both and replace with correct ones all in one operation.
Can anyone on here tell me what options are available.

Thanks

[TimU]

There are 4 different possible toothed gears,
13
16
17
19

Honestly, do yourself a favour and just buy the whole set.

https://www.garagistic.com/products/e24-odometer-gears

[Jubilados]

I would not recommend the Garagistic gears, they are garbage and they don’t stand behind their product. Wasted so much of my time and their “customer service” was shockingly bad - the worst by far that I’ve ever encountered in my 40 years of working on cars.

Odometergears.com is a bit more expensive, but they are a quality precision product, so you don’t have to worry about taking your cluster apart several times. And they are a quality company who stands behind their products.

[86_6series]

+1 on Odometergears.com

[hornhospital]

I would not recommend the Garagistic gears, they are garbage and they don’t stand behind their product.

How so? I've used Garagistic gears in both my E24s and both E30s with ZERO problems. The set in my 85 325e is approaching 60,000 miles of use. I can't speak for your experience with Garagistic odometer gears, but mine has been all positive.

[Jubilados]

They sold me (and others) defective gears, and it was downhill from there. (The gears were defectively made because one of them was missing the “collar” or spacer on it, which made it so that when you assembled it, it initially worked. But within a few miles the missing collar/spacer allowed the gear to walk on the shaft, lose contact with the other gear, and stop turning. A clear manufacturing defect, which is ok, but their response and absolute refusal to deal with it was totally shocking to the point of being comical. All over a $25 gear set).

I’m glad you had an ok experience, but IMO vendors need to be judged by how they handle their worst transactions, not their best.

In that regard, Garagistic and their gears are a fail.

(In addition, when you compare the Garagistic and odometer.com gears side by side, it is readily apparent that the odometer.com gears are much higher quality, more precision made and more finely finished. Garagistic gears appear to be made on a 3D printer. Low grade. None of these gear sets are expensive, but the time and labor of taking the cluster out, as well as dealing with 35 year old plastics, imo makes spending a few dollars more for the clearly superior parts a no brainer to me).

[TimU]

They sold me (and others) defective gears, and it was downhill from there. (The gears were defectively made because one of them was missing the “collar” or spacer on it, which made it so that when you assembled it, it initially worked. But within a few miles the missing collar/spacer allowed the gear to walk on the shaft, lose contact with the other gear, and stop turning. A clear manufacturing defect, which is ok, but their response and absolute refusal to deal with it was totally shocking to the point of being comical. All over a $25 gear set).

Sorry to hear that - it sounds like you had a horrible experience. I'm not trying to diminish your pain, but my experience was generally positive.

I heard that this was an issue with their earlier designs, Song reported something similar in his build thread.

Apparently the newer design fixes the "spacer" problem that you described.

I noticed that my 3rd drive gear (old brown) had a built-in stand-off, however the new 3rd gear did not.
I queried Garagistic, and was told that the new design had addressed the problem and did not need a stand-off.

The Garagistic gears that I received and installed earlier this year have been fine for about 500kms so far.
.
Old 3rd gear with bottom stand-off

IMG_20220508_160520~2.jpg (360.56 KiB) Viewed 1146 times

.
New 3rd, no standoff

IMG_20220705_204108.jpg (2.83 MiB) Viewed 1143 times

.
Installed into Odometer body - Unable to slip from gears.

IMG_20220705_210220.jpg (2.95 MiB) Viewed 1143 times

[Jubilados]

I asked them about the issue before I installed the gears (because their own instructions referenced using a spacer). They told me the same thing they told you, the “new design” didn’t need a spacer.

Narrator voice: The spacer was needed.

You can see from these pics, since you know how these gears work. The second pic is the odometer.com exact duplicate of the factory gear (white) and the Garagistic gear (pink).

The first pic shows the Garagistic 2 gears, blue and pink. Without the built in spacer on the pink gear, there is nothing stopping the gears from getting into the position shown in the first picture. It my happen in 2 miles, or 200 miles, but it will happen. And as you know, if the gears get into that position, the odo stops turning.

(Edit: Song’s post and pictures shows the problem more clearly)

[Jubilados]

It doesn’t make sense to me to not simply duplicate the factory gears exactly.
Then it is 100% going to work 100% of the time.
That is what odometergears.com does.
For me, that piece of mind is worth a few extra dollars on this type of job.
Just my experience and opinion.

[Jubilados]

But that wasn’t even really the point.
The amazing part was their response to the problem.
I’m local, so I went to their shop to buy the gears. I brought my speedo with me. They replaced the gears on their counter while I was standing there, I paid $25 cash for the gears.
After I got it back in the car, it worked for a few miles, then stopped.
I took it all apart and reassembled it all again, thinking maybe they made a mistake.
Again, worked for a few miles and stopped.
At that point I ordered the odometer.com gears and installed them. (They of course have worked flawlessly for almost 2 years now).
When I saw the design difference between the odometer.com gears and the Garagistic gears, the reason for the failure was clear - it was caused by the lack of the standoff or spacer on the Garagistic gears. Perhaps they gave me the “old design” or wrong gear set, I don’t know. The bottom line is after being installed correctly twice, once by them and once again by me, they didn’t work reliably.
(EDIT: Tim, yes, the problem I had was exactly as documented in Song’s post that you linked. It shows the same design defect I encountered).
Anyways, I contacted them and simply asked that they take the gears back (which of course were in as new condition) and give me my $25 back.
What followed was astounding. The fight they put up and the excuses they made! Just to try to keep my $25.
They claimed it must be an installation error. Notwithstanding the fact they were installed at their shop!
They claimed their accounting system couldn’t handle it (can’t handle reaching into the drawer and handing back the $25 cash I gave them a few days before?)
They demanded photo documentation. Etc etc.
All for $25. It was literally insane.
I’ve been rebuilding/restoring/working on cars for 40 years and have bought hundreds of thousands of dollars in parts. I’ve never had a problem with a vendor, and never posted a negative review. But these people were literally unbelievable.

[Jubilados]

To really net it out, below is a screenshot of their publicly stated claim.

They talk the talk, but certainly in my case didn’t walk the walk. (For $25!)

Their refusal to honor their own words is all I need to know about them and their business practices and ethics.

Not anyone I’d ever want to deal with again.

That’s just me. YMMV.

[Jubilados]

Anyways, back to technical.
Tim, I’m curious, is the gear you put in like the pink one in my picture? With no standoff or spacer?
If so, what stops it from walking away like in Song’s post (and as it did to me)?
I can’t see in your pictures what is stopping the light blue gear from possibly sliding away and losing contact with the black gear underneath it.

[L.Tigre]

For what it's worth: my own experience was that the gears themselves were not truly broken in the original odometer, even though the odometer itself didn't work. I disassembled and inspected them, and I observed that while the gears still meshed and seemed undamaged and functional, the metal shafts that the gears are mounted onto were rough from minor corrosion. Some very-fine sanding of the metal shafts and some wd40 was all it needed. Upon re-assembly all worked fine. For now the odometer is still working ~2 months later.

I had ordered some Garagiastic gears but I got impatient and took the thing apart before they arrived. The gears are still here in the original box in case it fails in the future.

(Similarly: the speedometer wan't functional; so I just cleaned the circuit board and wiring contacts. Now it works.... no resoldering or jumping of wires/traces required).