Are 180kmh and 220kmh Speedometer's Interchangeable?

[the_darkside]

As you may have guessed, I'm wondering if the 180kmh speedo out of a Eunos is directly interchangeable with the 220kmh speedo out of an MX-5. Im talking about the in dash unit, I have a spare dash from a Eunos and was going to make custom gauges from it, however if putting the MX5 speedo cable into the Eunos speedo won't work, i'll have to tear apart my MX5 dash too...

Any ideas?

[emily_mx5]

I'm not quite sure what you are asking, but here are my experiences:
You cannot interchange the gauge faces, ie the thin bits of plastic that have the numbers written on them. As the needle will be way off, due to the 180km and 220km being in the same spot. The 220 has an extra 40km worth of numbers to fit in so it's more "squished".
You can however swap entire clusters. I had a jdm NA cluster in my ausdm NA briefly to pass a pink slip as my speedo wasn't working on the original cluster. The speed was perfect (checked with 2 gps) and everything else worked.
So basically you can swap them but it's gotta be the whole unit.


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[timk]

You can swap them between clusters, as long as you swap the odometer together with the speedo then it works fine. This info only applies to NB stuff, I haven't played with NA/NC gauge clusters.

[the_darkside]

Thanks Emily, that pretty much answers my question. On a side note, not that I think anyone's tried it, but can you reverse the polarity of the speedo to make it move counter-clockwise?

[hks_kansei]

NA is cable operated, so no.

They also have internal clockspring like parts that make the needle come to rest at zero if I recall.

NB is an electronic speedo, but again, still has the springs.

[the_darkside]

I can only find one type of replacement speedo cable, so i'm assuming the internal springs are set differently so they can take the same cable? In which case, Emily's practice proved right.

[hks_kansei]

Cable will be the same, but I can't remember if the difference in calibration is in the cluster, or at the gearbox end on the speedo drive.

I seem to recall it's at the cluster (I know 100% it is for NB)