Odometer repair leads innovator to build a parts business

Daily Press (Newport News, Va.) (MCT) - Nine years ago, Jeff Caplan was working on a 1980 five-series BMW and needed to fix the odometer.

"Every speedometer shop I contacted said the same thing, 'You have to send it in. We don't sell parts,'" said Caplan, who lives in Newport News

"All I needed was a small plastic part to fix it."

Determined to do his own thing, Caplan talked to a friend in the model shop at NASA where he worked as a photographer. After a few lessons on vacuum chamber molding, he found a pump on eBay.

"I built a chamber out of discarded sewer pipe and researched materials online to make the parts," Caplan said.

After he made similar parts for a friend in Virginia, word got around and a business _ Odometer Gears at www.odometergears.com _ was born.

"I ran the business on the side for the first six years until it was really affecting my regular job," he says.

"I really didn't want to miss seeing my three kids grow up while I was at work all day. I ran the numbers and figured with the writeoff for my health care, more time to focus on the business and working from home, things would go all right and they have. I have seen my three kids grow up, I can help my wife during the day and I talk cars all day and night long."

In addition to odometer gears, the business makes windshield wiper gears, and headlight and seat parts for European and domestic cars.

"The whole idea is to supply a part to fix a larger assembly so the consumer doesn't have to buy an expensive assembly," he says. "This simple idea saves the consumer money and less waste goes to landfills."

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MORE ABOUT ODOMETERS

Jeff Caplan answers a few questions about the mechanics of a car's odometer.

Question: What makes an odometer work?

Answer: There are three different types of odometers, from oldest to newest: cable, electronic and digital. We make about 50 different parts for the first two. For digital repairs, we publish a list on our Web page of shops we would send our own units for fixing. The other two work generally the same way. A cable is being turned from a gear in the transmission which turns the speedometer and the odometer. On an electronic unit, a magnetic pickup is sending a signal to the unit along with 12 volts to run the needle and the odometer.

To fix a broken unit, most are very simple. The broken gears are usually found on the side of the speedometer; swap the broken ones out for new ones gets you running again. Each speedometer has special small tricks that make a difference when you are changing the gears. Our Web site has all the details; when a customer can't figure it out, we are always near the phone to help at any hour.

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Q: What makes an odometer break?

A: The units we directly work on have original gears made from a soft material that degrades with the oil they use for lubricant. Some gears were hard plastic and some were soft rubber in each unit. After about 8 to 12 years, one or more gears fail from the oil and heat of the sun. We use a hard plastic with graphite mixed in for self lubrication. The new material is also good with petroleum-based lubricants so they should last forever.

Q: What about today's odometers?

A: They are digital and look great but you can't work on them without breaking the software codes. The tooling is out there but very expensive. We don't get into them. The two older styles are easy for the average owner to fix.

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© 2009, Daily Press (Newport News, Va.).