As some of you may be aware, my UK registered '94 T2 now resides permanently in Spain, and has been re-registered as a Spanish vehicle. I did the conversion work necessary for it to comply with Spanish law about 3 years ago, but didn't do the speedo as the inner ring of kph markings were sufficient to comply with their regulations.
However, I did have trouble reading these, particularly at night, and with the really heavy-handed crackdown on speeding we are currently experiencing over here, decided to try to convert the speedo to read kph.
I tried to get a whole speedo assembly from a lhd Terrano fron eBay Spain, France and Germany (hoping it would fit on the other side of the car), but failed miserably, so I decided on another course. This is what I did, and the following is a write up to demonstrate that this is a relatively simple and inexpensive way to achieve the conversion.
http://s1191.photobucket.com/user/Terranical/media/P1020950.jpg.html?sort=3&o=1
http://s1191.photobucket.com/user/Terranical/media/P1020951.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0
I found that the speedo face from a '94 Nissan Micra is very similar to that of the Terrano, and found a complete Micra speedo on eBay Germany for 12€.
When it arrived I stripped the face out (easy to do, particularly as I didn't need the rest of it) then removed my Terrano speedo. To achieve this there are 12 screws to remove in total, with 4 holding the plastic moulding below the steering wheel (plus one large one more or less above the throttle advance knob, this doesn't come out completely, and doesn't need to), four holding the plastic hood and four the speedo itself. I had to unplug some of the switches to pull the mouldings free, but they just pull off.
Once all this is done the whole speedo assembly just lifts out.
To get to the speedo face the front "glass" has to be removed - this held by 7 clips, 3 at the top and 4 at the bottom. They can be lifted slightly by pushing a small screwdriver under them whilst pulling the glass assembly forward. This now gives access to the clock faces.
The next step is to remove the speedo needle, and the best way to do this is with a table fork under the centre, . It is a simple push fit and pops off easily.
However, and this is important, before you remove the needle, gently lift it over the stop at 0 mph and allow it to find it's own position, then loosely refit the surround and put a mark where the needle now sits - this is to ensure the calibration of the needle remains the same.
Remove the mph speedo face by removing the 2 small black screws in the centre and the face will lift clear.
You will find at this point that it is quite a bit smaller than the Micra one, but all the holes (odometer, trip meter, clock adjust and trip reset etc) line up perfectly.
What I then did was place the mph one over the Micra kph one and drew round it, on the back of course! I then cut away the surplus with a pair of ordinary kitchen scissors (the material is thin, bendy plastic and dead easy to cut.
You will have to drill a small hole in the top left corner of your replacement, about 3mm I seem to recall - this fits over a plastic locating pin inside the speedo - when you are drawing around your old face, mark the position of that hole.
You can then fit the new face, replacing the two retaining screws, refit the needle, lining it up with the mark you made earlier, pushing it down until the centre is just clear of the face (if you push it right down it will bind on the face), lift the needle over it's stop again, refit the glass by pushing it into position, then reassembling the whole kit and caboodle in, as they say, reverse order.
The whole job took me about 30 - 45 minutes (it took me longer to type this!) at a total cost of about £15 (for the Micra speedo plus it's p&p)
If any one fancies trying this and you require any clarification please get in touch.
Bruce (Terranical)
