Gang,
I keep 2 ‘66 big cars, both of which have factory cruise units added. Both cars drive the speedometer directly from the front left wheel, not the GM-standard transmission. The speedo-driving-dust caps are getting rare.

Both cars use a somewhat special left front wheel dust cap with a nylon cable driver welded into the cap that spins the speedo cable at wheel speed. That dust cap with the insert works with both cruise and non-cruise speedos. I’ve learned over past few years that the cable squared off end is available on other models like the Corvair, but the Corvair dust cap does not fit ‘66 Olds big cars - probably owing to different wheel sizes.

But you can excise (i.e. cut out) the nylon cable driver & metal retainer from a Corvair replacement and install it into your big olds if you’re willing to get creative. In my case, I drilled the welds retaining the nylon driver to remove the nylon part with its retainer. Then I drilled my ‘66 Olds welds out to remove the broken nylon parts.

I can’t weld, so my challenge was to mechanically retain the (usually welded in) driver retainer into the cap. I settled on tightly bent cotter pins to hold the retainer into the cap. The cotter pin hack works fine, but only over a very small amount of testing - maybe 20 or 50 miles. Nothing.

Later I found the correct NOS big car dust cap, but am now debating using my hacked one as long as it will last vs. going back to factory with the NOS piece. I have 2 of these cars, so if I preserve the NOS piece, it could apply to either car, if the hacked one holds up longer run. Or I can use the hacked one on either car.

What do you all think?
1) Stick in the proper factory welded dust cap and hold the hacked dust cap in reserve.

or

2) Leave the hacked functional one in there until it breaks, then stick in the factory cap

In the end, I’m on the fence: go with proper NOS parts for reliability, or “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”.

Opinions most welcome!

Chris

 

This ^^^^^^^^^^^
Watch E-Bay, they pop up from time to time.

 

I do watch eBay regularly with focused search for 65-67 big olds. I completely agree that this dust cap will pop up eventually.

Has anyone else noticed that EBay is polluting well formed searches with much less relevant results lately? For a couple of years I’ve had a canned search aiming at 65-67 big olds and lately I’m seeing Chrysler, Hudson and Ford parts. I suspect EBay has changed their search algorithm to push sales, whether relevant or not…

Or maybe I’m just getting jumpy….

Chris

 

If you add a space and then -fits to the end of your search it cuts out a lot of the crap.