Grinding noise from spedometer XJ1100

There is a grinding noise coming from the speedometer. The pitch of the grinding goes up with RPMs. I am assuming that there is a gear or gears that may require some lube.

Anyone familiar with this noise?

 

I would stop right away and pull your gauges and go through them. There is a "How To" from big fritz on gauge clean and lube.

 

More likely the cable is in a bad way. The speedo gears are pretty robust.

 

The cable is brand new from Len. The gauges were purchased from eBay and have been working for the past week. I can try spraying some lube up into the speedometer.

I agree on the teardown. I was planning to tear down the non-working original speedo and tach.

 

My tachometer (mechanical) just developed a rattle at about 2k rpm. I know I need to disassemble, but in the meantime a piece of foam jammed between the housing and the frame muffled it

 

Update. I removed the speedo+tach, cleaned out as much as I could with out disassembling, place a few drops of Kroil where the cable spins the speedo and ran ran a few drops of Kroil down the speedo cable. Installed the instruments and took it out for a spin. There appears to be no noise coming from the speedo now. Happy for now. Cheers!

 

Speedo and Tach dissection with pics

• did you lube the speedo cable when you installed it the first time?

 

Kroil is not really the best permanent lube for that. It's a penetrating oil not a long time lubricant. Go to Big Fitz's Speedo restoration page and see what he was using.
Glad to hear you didn't loose your instruments again anyway.

 

The Kroil was just to test a theory. I did not lube the cable before installation. Shame on me. I do not have any proper cable lube on the shelf and will have to acquire some.

I have the non-functioning speedo apart per Fitz's write-up. This speedo does not do anything when you spin the cable input. It appears to be broken inside the cantilevered bell shaped housing. I think the PO dropped or crashed the bike and gave the speedo a major shock. The metal brace inside is bent in a couple of directions. The gas tank has two quarter size dings one on each side. All evidence points to the PO rider not being able to handle the bike.

At this point I think that the non-functioning speedo is going into a box on the shelf for spare parts. The one I swapped in has many more miles on it but it works.