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Suboval
Samba Member
Joined: September 15, 2003
Posts: 794
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 Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 7:41 am Post subject: |
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| splitjunkie wrote: |
| tstracy39 wrote: |
| Suboval wrote: |
| johnshenry wrote: |
Another one recently discovered:
You can see the reset knob below the dash. |
How many fakes does this make? |
This one is actually the most likely to be a real, purpose-built by VDO trip speedo, because the dial face is clearly made from scratch to be a trip speedo dial face and is not just a regular non-trip speedo dial face with the tripodometer dial windows punched out. You could special order just about any kind of speedometer from VDO at one time if you wanted, they made many special speedos for one-off Porsche based racecars and prototype VW's in the 50's. It was just exceedingly rare for someone to try to race in a Split Beetle back then, due to the inherent slowness of the car, and this is why you rarely see the real Split trip speedos these days. Some Split Beetle taxis might have had the trip speedos, but there are only a handful of surviving Split Beetle taxis today, and taxi speedometers are almost always a special purpose built speedo that is quite a bit larger than a standard Split Beetle speedometer because they have a very complicated internal mechanism to drive the odometer (the odometer needs to continuously move forward even if the car gets put in reverse, otherwise the taxi driver loses the fare for the number of milesX2 that the car is driven in reverse, and the resulting very complicated odometer drive mechanism is large and takes up a lot of space, making the speedo housing significantly larger than a stock Split Beetle speedo housing, at least an inch longer in total length. Also, taxi speedos almost always have a locking trip reset mechanism, so that it's not possible for the passenger to zero out the tripodometer unless he gets the key from the driver somehow). |
Maybe it's an optical illusion but the center of that speedo appears to be a different color from the rest of the the faceplate. It looks like that one on the first page that had a separate center bezel. |
It appears to be a porsche 356 speedo. Those reset from the bottom.
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tstracy39
Samba Member
Joined: May 14, 2008
Posts: 3294
Location: Seattle, WA
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| Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 2:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Suboval wrote: |
| splitjunkie wrote: |
| tstracy39 wrote: |
| Suboval wrote: |
| johnshenry wrote: |
Another one recently discovered:
You can see the reset knob below the dash. |
How many fakes does this make? |
This one is actually the most likely to be a real, purpose-built by VDO trip speedo, because the dial face is clearly made from scratch to be a trip speedo dial face and is not just a regular non-trip speedo dial face with the tripodometer dial windows punched out. You could special order just about any kind of speedometer from VDO at one time if you wanted, they made many special speedos for one-off Porsche based racecars and prototype VW's in the 50's. It was just exceedingly rare for someone to try to race in a Split Beetle back then, due to the inherent slowness of the car, and this is why you rarely see the real Split trip speedos these days. Some Split Beetle taxis might have had the trip speedos, but there are only a handful of surviving Split Beetle taxis today, and taxi speedometers are almost always a special purpose built speedo that is quite a bit larger than a standard Split Beetle speedometer because they have a very complicated internal mechanism to drive the odometer (the odometer needs to continuously move forward even if the car gets put in reverse, otherwise the taxi driver loses the fare for the number of milesX2 that the car is driven in reverse, and the resulting very complicated odometer drive mechanism is large and takes up a lot of space, making the speedo housing significantly larger than a stock Split Beetle speedo housing, at least an inch longer in total length. Also, taxi speedos almost always have a locking trip reset mechanism, so that it's not possible for the passenger to zero out the tripodometer unless he gets the key from the driver somehow). |
Maybe it's an optical illusion but the center of that speedo appears to be a different color from the rest of the the faceplate. It looks like that one on the first page that had a separate center bezel. |
It appears to be a porsche 356 speedo. Those reset from the bottom. |
Definitely has a separate piece around the odometer/tripodometer dials. I couldn't see at first due to how low the resolution of the picture is, but looking at the speedo on page 1 where there's a line separating the two pieces there's a blurry line in the same place in this pic. The fact that it's owned by one of the Grundmanns and claimed by them to be real should be enough to authenticate it, they did restore VW38 #6 to its current state after all. The speedometer can't be Porsche 356, because the early Porsche 356 speedos that have 3 tripodometer dials and a trip reset handle that hangs straight down instead of the 4 dials and angled reset handle that Porsche 356A/B/C speedos have, are almost all made by Veigel not VDO and they all have a speedometer mechanism of a completely different design, with the speedo cable connection going straight out the back of the housing instead of being angled, so it won't line up with the Split Beetle speedo cable assembly and the parts won't interchange with those of a Split Beetle speedo mechanism: the early Porsche tripodometer assembly won't swap on to the Split Beetle speedo mechanism along with the frame that holds it because the frame is smaller and has a different shape, plus it has no bearing to hold the Splt Beetle worm gear intermediate odometer driveshaft, and the tripodometer itself won't swap onto the respective frame on a regular non-trip Split Beetle speedo mechanism because there are cutouts on the frame making it impossible to mount a tripodometer. Later Porsche 356 parts interchange directly, but they have the 4 tripodometer dials and the trip reset handle that sticks out at an angle.
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Jdt1976
Samba Member
Joined: March 23, 2014
Posts: 25
Location: South Africa
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| Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2016 9:57 pm Post subject: Re: Split trip speedometer |
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This speedo looks the same as the nos one of Claus.
It is for sale, what do you guys think, is it for real and what is a fair price?
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IN2VWS
Samba Member
Joined: January 29, 2006
Posts: 2521
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2016 11:02 pm Post subject: Re: Split trip speedometer |
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Hmmmm......So the trip only goes to 99.9km?....not even a tank full of fuel????
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johnshenry 
Samba Member
Joined: September 21, 2001
Posts: 9364
Location: Northwood, NH USA
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| Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2016 12:33 pm Post subject: Re: Split trip speedometer |
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| IN2VWS wrote: |
| Hmmmm......So the trip only goes to 99.9km?....not even a tank full of fuel???? |
Depends on how you drive... 
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Zwitterkafer
Samba Member
Joined: November 17, 2007
Posts: 879
Location: Lanark County, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2016 2:29 pm Post subject: Re: Split trip speedometer |
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Fake because of the light colored last numeral, but note also that the apertures for the trip numerals are not as crisply square as those of the main numerals. The paint immediately around them is damaged too. Plus, the spaces between the trip numerals look narrower than those between the main numerals. On the Claus speedo, they look to be equal in size.
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