Odometer Gear Repair Kit Mustang 1994-1998

I spend so much time working on my 1996 Cobra that I often forget how old the car is. By Pennsylvania standards almost all the SN95 Mustangs are considered classic cars. Like the Fox body before them, there's a lot of common problems that do plague the SN95 Mustangs but one of them is odometer failure.

These gears located in the odometer can go bad over time and your odometer stops working. So today we're going to show you how to fix that problem using this 1996 Mustang Cobra.

These replacement gears will fit the odometer of all 1994 through 1998 Mustangs. You have your worm gear and your driven gear and what happens to the original gears over time, the plastic dries out and they crack and it no longer puts miles on your car. So, today we're going to show you how to fix that by installing these new gears.

For this installation you need a T-15 TORX Bit, T-20 TORX bit, small flat blade screwdriver, and small plastic pry bar.

The first thing you'll do for the installation, disconnect your battery, then move inside the interior and we're going to remove our headlights switch. Now, in our case we have a Billet switch that's held on by set screw. If you have the factory one, what you're going to do is you’re going to turn it and you'll see a little slot with a metal clip.

What you would do is put a little flathead screwdriver in the slot that would be there on the stock one, you're going to push the metal clip away and then just pull the nob off. Once you have that off there's going to be two T20 TORX screws, one here and one here, we're going to remove.

There's a small clips on the bottom, basically what you want to do is pull from the top and it will pop right off. Now to remove the cluster there's going to be four screws. One here, here, here, and here.

You want to remove the black screws, not the brass/bronze looking ones right now. The black screws will actually get the cluster out of the car. Now again, you need your same T20 TORX bit or also takes, I believe, an 8mm socket.

And I can pull the cluster out. You kind of want to tilt it at an angel so you can get behind it and unplug it. So you have one plug on each side, a little pushpin at the top. And remove the cluster from the car.

With the cluster out of the car on a table now it's time to disassemble. We're going to start by taking the lens and bezel off. There's going to be four screws across the bottom and four more across the top.

Now we have to disassemble the cluster to get inside of it, so what you have to do is basically these are three plates and there's plugs underneath that sit into a socket. So what you have to do is pry them off.

Now, you want to be really, really careful. You don't want to get like this underneath the face of the gauge because you'll damage it. You have to make sure you get under the plastic to sort of wiggle it and it will pop off.

Same thing here in the middle. You just pop one side and the whole assembly will come out. Let me put this aside for now. I'm going to be working now with the cluster, with the speedometer and tach part of our cluster face down, so you want to get something soft to put it on because you want to make sure you don't damage these.

If you want to you can remove them. As long as you're careful you should be fine. What we need to do is turn this clockwise. So with the small screwdriver sort of pick up on this plastic here, and give you enough room to turn it.

This is our worm gear and as expected it has some chips missing out of it. You want to take note of basically the gap down here with the worm gear on the motor. Want to make sure when we put the new one on we replicate that gap.

Next we're going to remove the driven gear, which is right here. Again, use a little flathead screwdriver, because you have to get underneath it a little bit, then pop it up. And again we have some damaged dears in here. I did bump it with my screwdriver but it was already damaged beforehand.

Now you want to pick it up carefully, if there's any other pieces get them out of there. Now take our new driven gear, push that down into place, use your screwdriver, gotta make sure it's seated where it's supposed to be.

Now the worm gear. Now this will be a tighter fit, but you sorta have to kind of work this on here. Careful not to damage anything. Sometimes it's easier just to literally push it against this. What I like to do is put the screwdriver in there so that way your gaps right.

Now we'll reinstall this, turn it to lock it in place and we're ready to reassemble everything. We're putting it back together and I should mention in case you're asking, this has been upgraded to LED's in here but if you're considering replacing any bulbs in your cluster or upgrading your lighting, now is the perfect time to do it.

Let's line this up, push it back down into place. And the same thing here. Just line up the tabs. Don't force it. It will pop right into place. If you have to push it, you’re at an off-angle, just straighten it out a little bit.

Now carefully line up the bezel lens, make sure it won't hit anything. I recommend getting them all started before tightening anything down. And it's ready to go back in the car.

Now install it the same way we took out. Start by plugging everything in. Now reinstall the screws. Now you can reinstall the trim. Now if you have the stock headlight knob with the clip installed you're basically gonna line it up and then just push it on. In our case we have an aftermarket. Ours uses a retaining screw. Now you want to reconnect your battery and your installations finished.

As you can see, replacing the odometer gears is very easy and it will keep us out of trouble. As far as the installation goes, this should take you no more than about an hour to be back on the road in no time.