Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing speedometer bouncing

Hello all, I hope someone can enlighten me on why my speedometer needle occasionally stops working by going into a bounce action. The car is a 3.7 2012 Roadster. if I turn car off and restart it seems to reset itself for a while, keeps working after that until I start it again . seems a bit of a lottery if its going to work or not ,Any ideas ? thanks in advance

No idea. But I let the ECU wRm up and only press start once the needles have moved fully right and back again.

This can happen if you start the car too quickly after turning on the ignition.

Give time for all the electronics to set themselves after turning on the ignition - about 5 seconds and all will be well.

Think of it as like switching on a computer. It is basically one anyway. The ecu will do certain checks on the systems as it comes into life when switching the ignition on so waiting a few seconds for it to stabilise after these boot up checks before starting the engine is a good idea.

I tend to switch on then fasten the seat belt, check mirrors & settle into the seat before turning over the engine. This seems to give it enough time to warm up.

Many thanks I will try suggestions.

Hi all, I know there is a bit of a time-lag between the last message on this thread and this, however I thought I'd add rather than start a fresh.

So I have a 2007 Series III Aero 8 and whilst out this weekend the speedometer threw a fit and decided that the needle should move round the dial to the full stop, past 180mph and just flicker there permanently and at the same time I lost the mileage display from the little LCD screen above the VDO logo. All other clocks working normally and the speedo did retain it's backlighting so there is power there, any ideas?

After I got home and washed the Aero when I started it to put it back in the garage the speedo returned to normal operation and the mileage display also came back showing the correct mileage on odometer and trip counter. Is this a case of MORGAN (Most Owners Regard Gremlins As Normal) or has anyone experienced something similar which requires a more structured cure? If a more structured cure is required is it a rebuild/replacement? Thought I'd ask here before contacting Jamie at BHM.

I'm certainly going to the try apply the 5-second rule suggested above to see if that helps first. It was odd that the speedo was fine when I first turned the car on, it just started to behave oddly after about 10mins of driving. Fingers Crossed!

I had a similar problem at the start of my journey to take the Plus 4 for its service and MOT test. The odometer went blank as I reversed out of the garage, the speedometer packed up 50 miles into the journey. When I arrived at the garage, the engineer said to use the “Bill Gates technique”, switch off and switch back on, normality resumes.

That's exactly what mine did, fingers crossed it was a one-off and not the start of a more serious issue. From some internet searching it appears that a "Speed sensor" which is proving less than 100% reliable can cause this fault and allegedly is a reasonably simple fix - although probably not on a Morgan!

I would guess its a morgan quirk. My 2004 roadster speedo will occasionally flicker when idling. Not too often, and others have reported the same, which gives me some comfort.