The MacMillan dictionary defines calibrate as “to make a series of regular marks on a piece of equipment for measuring things”, so that means I have three vehicles with speedometers calibrated in miles and kilometers.
BTW, other dictionaries have similar definitions, and can be found here: http://www.onelook.com/
It’s an online dictionary search engine.
Oh… It wasn’t a design flaw at the time. But my first car, a 1962 Olds 98 had two ashtrays in the front dash. One for the driver, one for the front seat passenger. It also had that rolling speedometer. We used to have ashtrays like we have cup holders today.
And lighters! I had a Coupe DeVille that had four ash trays with a lighter in each one.
As the owner of a Saab 9-5, I can’t disagree. 
Love driving it, but the design and engineering is very quirky. I *still *haven’t figured out how the climate control system works…
I’m still trying to find out how to open the ventilation system in my Mercedes.
Notwithstanding the discussion of the above, I’m not sure what you’re asking here. In the USA most cars have markings for both kilometers and miles, or, like my old Bonneville, a single set of markings that is switchable.
My current car is only marked in km/h, because currently live in a metric country. When I’ve lived in or travelled in other metric countries they’ve had speedometers graduated in kilometers, too.
FWIW, the Bonneville wasn’t an electronic display; it was a physical, analogue needle.
I mean the odometer, not the speedometer. The instrument that tells how far the car has traveled–since it was manufactured. It’s my understanding that autos manufactured for use elsewhere in the world (that is, not in the U. S.) keep that record in kilometers, not in miles.
My Mercedes does have a speedometer that shows the car’s speed in miles per hour and kilometers per hour, but the odometer is set to record the car’s total traveled mileage, (not “kilometerage,” if there is such a word) including the trip odometer.
My '60 Corvair had a gasoline heater with a spark plug. It was up front, under the hood,(yeah, right near the gas tank!). It went off with a muffled “wooof” and seconds later the air coming out of it was too hot to hold your hand under. I had to roll the window down some even in Chicago winters.
I think every car I’ve ever owned has had weird stuff. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
older cars with mechanical odometers are stuck with only being able to display either miles or km, but not both. they’re usually operated via a drive cable, so whether the odometer displays miles or km depends on the gear ratios between it and the drive cable.
on modern cars, it’s all electronic. The PCM (and a few other modules) store the total distance traveled as just a number, basically a count of how many times some “thing” has spun around. What’s displayed on the dash as your “mileage” is that “number” in the PCM divided by a correction factor which accounts for the tire circumference and (depending on where the vehicle speed info comes from) the final drive gear ratio. If you want to change the display to km it’s as simple as changing the math.
What I had read about speedometer/odometer technology is that the flexible cord that spins the magnet behind the speedometer, creating a magnetic field, is itself driven by a gear system operating off a *front * wheel. I will not, of course, assume that all cars have used this arrangement.
in my experience (which is mostly with older domestics) the speedometer cable was driven by a gear at the transmission’s output shaft.
What particular makes have you worked with?
Only car I know that did that was the Beetle. All the domestic makes I’ve fiddled with (Ford, Chev, AMC, Plymouth) ran the speedo by a flex cable driven off the transmission output shaft. Incidentally, they all had provisions to easily change the gear at the transmission end of the flex cable to allow recalibration of the speedo if you were using bigger tires or a different rear end ratio.
Have you noticed that the speedometer (and presumably the odometer) will not function if the car is in reverse?
:smack: I often criticize others for poor reading comprehension. I’m embarrassed.
How old is the Mercedes? Any car made this century should be able to toggle between both of them.
I think “kilometerage” is a word, but every foreigner from country I’ve ever met uses the word “mileage” when we’re discussing the topic in English. This is usually in a work context, so I’m including non-native English speakers here, too, and of course we talk about mileage a lot.
In non-English, I usually hear the word “consumption,” e.g., “el consumo” in Spanish when indicating efficiency, but I don’t recall a specific analogue for mileage when indicating total distance travelled.
Certain large Oldsmobiles used the front left wheel as well. I do remember having to fix a Super Beetle speedo- no one in town had the right part, so I bought a universal cable, cut it to length, and attached it at the wheel end with a bit of a Bic pen tube. I heated up the plastic tube and jammed it into the hub, then heated the cable and melted it into the plastic. I then inserted the cable through the spindle and attached the hub, then the speedo end of the cable. Worked for 25,000 miles!
According to the parts person at the Mercedes dealership to whom I gave the car’s VIN, it’s a 1993–a C-280. When I had a replacement instrument cluster installed, the main odometer automatically displayed the car’s total mileage, apparently as recorded in a computer.
I would be interested to know how you threaded the cable from the wheel site to the back of the dashboard.
What had happened was something got spilled into the speedometer from the trunk. This glued the part the cable spins fast, causing the original cable to snap, but did not damage the tube the cable runs in. The hub I mentioned is just a dust cap that snaps into the brake drum over the end of the spindle. I attached the cable to the cap, then fed it up through the tube.
Oh. I thought you would have attached one end of some kind of string to the old cable, and a new cable to the other end, and drawn the old cable out so that the new one would be properly threaded in. (I used this technique to replace the cotton draw cord in the frame on the traverse rod on a window once.)