RYAN: Once you get into this sort of work, it's very engrossing.
You can walk in in the morning and before you realise you're off out the door again to go home.
I'm Ryan Linley.
I'm a vintage instrument restorer and I live in South Wales.
Today we're going to convert an Aston Martin DB5 speedometer from kilometres to miles per hour.
The first thing we need to do is give the instrument a run up on the machine.
At the calibrated speed, the instrument should show 60 kilometres per hour
and this one certainly isn't.
Now we've assessed the condition of the instrument,
it’s time to start taking it apart and fixing these problems.
Now I'm going to remove the bezel, the glass,
the slip ring and any rubber seals that are in the front of the instrument.
With the casing removed we can see the internals.
Next, I'm removing the dial screws and I'm going to lift the dial carefully from the movement
First we remove the pole arms and then the counter gears.
Then we can separate the trip counter assembly.
This facet which passes light for the warning lights
has gone cloudy so we're going to cut it off.
New facets are no longer available so we have to recover them from new old stock dials.
Now that the new facets have been installed in the new dial we can fit it to the instrument.
Now we've taken everything apart, we've inspected everything, and it's time for a thorough cleaning.
The cleaning fluid is a special blend of chemicals designed to clean dirt and grease
without damaging some of the delicate parts of the instrument.
Now that I'm happy with the condition of
all of the parts I'm going to start putting the instrument back together.
I'm using a specialist grease to ensure that this
instrument will run for many, many years without fail.
A light buffing ensures that threads have no rough edges.
The next step is to put the speed cup on top and just check that it runs freely
and then we're going to mount the top plate, re-attach the hair spring,
and start building up the counter assembly.
I've changed the odometer gears to ensure that the ratios are correct for mile-per-hour unit.
I’m now rebuilding the odometer assembly.
This can be very fiddly.
More rotating parts means more specialist grease.
This pole arm advances the odometer counters so it's important it moves freely.
A quick turn of the reset spindle shows that the counters are resetting correctly.
Now I'm going to fit the MPH dial and carefully secure with the dial screws.
Put the pointer on for a little polish and then we have something that looks like
an instrument coming back together.
The next step is calibration.
I'm going to put the speedometer on to our specialist magnet charger.
It pulses a large amount of energy across the magnet and charges it up like a battery.
Holding the instrument in the hand while testing gives lots of feedback in terms of vibration,
the tiny little things that point out any problems that may be lurking.
This instrument feels lovely and smooth now when it runs
so I'm quite happy that there are no issues.
We're going to give everything a good clean, make sure there's no particles or
fingerprints inside the instrument, and then we're going to fit the bezel to seal the job completely.
We can test it at the new mile-per-hour calibration value
and ensure that the speed reading is correct.
I certainly can't imagine doing anything other than this sort of work.