Speedo mount

[newmextuna]

I am new to the Vintage Ducati Forum; this is my first post.

I'm in the process of putting into riding condition a 1974 740GT. It has Veglia instruments. The speedo needs new rubber mounts underneath, and a rubber ring around the bezel. Are these available? Thanks for your reply.

- Roger Hathaway

[Ken Shepard]

I found the bezel rubbers here http://www.desmo-ducati.de/

[BevHevSteve]

I have them in stock - check my shopping cart

[focusrsh]

I'm having the same problem. It isn't the rubber gasket around the instruments, it is the two (per instrument) rubber standoffs that mount the instrument to the metal bracket. They are about 1/4" diameters and about 7/16" long with bonded screws on each end. The rubber has long ago given up the ghost. Repairing them involves two big problems: (1) bonding the metal screws to new rubber, and (2) removing the old ones from the instruments.

For the former, I've made new rubber standoff and have had some success using JBWeld epoxy (the world's best stuff!) to glue the old ends to the new rubber pieces. (I tried Locktite metal-to-rubber super glue and it doesn't have any shear strength at all.) Still experimenting with that.

For the latter, I'm flumixed. The instruments (Vegalia) don't appear to be rebuildable, since the bessels are crimped on. One end of the rubber standoff is bolted on from INSIDE the instrument. How to get it off? So far all I've done is carefully file off the rubber remains until I have a shiny metal button showing, which is the end of the old mount. The I made a woodend form to clamp the new rubber piece to the button while it glues.

I'll let you know how it works. I won't have any idea about the long-term success of this, lthough.

[focusrsh]

I found a product that works great for repairing the two rubber standoffs that mount each of the Vegalia instruments. It is "Hybond 80 plus", which is a contact adhesive for gluing metal to rubber. It cost ~$10 per quart (the smallest quantity I could buy) and you'll need about two drops per standoff. But it works great and it's only $10.

In my case, I made new standoffs from rubber test-tube stoppers. The metal screw "studs" were cut off the old standoffs and ground down to baremetal, removing all traces of the old rubber. The impossible-to-remove studs in the instrument were left in place but again the rubber was ground away. This is important! You MUST have smooth, clean metal. Then it was a simple matter of following the instructions on the Hybond can to bond the new standoffs to the metal studs.

You won't find Hybond at your local hardware store. I got it through an industrial rubber supply shop. It is worth the time to find it because nothing else I tried work for this repair.

[focusrsh]

The Hybond solution did not work in the long term. After a month or so, the bond failed at the joint between the new rubber bits and the metal instrument.

I ended up making some threaded metal standoffs and epoxying them to the instruments where the old rubber standoffs attached. Then I put a rubber spacer between the new standoff and the metal bracket inside the instrument cluster, and screwed the standoff to the bracket, tightening it just enough to have some freeplay and vibration resistance. A drop of blue Locktite holds the screw in that position.