We're talking about 2 different things here:
The odometer totally not working- usually because the black drive gear
is broken and turning on its shaft.
And, The trip meter not resetting.
I'd have to agree, having addressed both problems in my earlier
Vanagons, neither seems to have been caused by resetting on the fly.
(And , Sam, clutch in or out should make no difference. The speedo is
driven by the front wheel. The speedo doesn't know if there even IS a
tranny.) BOTH seem to be  caused by plastic degradation. The trip meter
on my 82 wouldn't reset because the speedo assembly was moving forward
when I pushed the button. I think I changed out the whold cluster for a
less deteriorated one.
This hole damn plastic rot thing bothers me. Not so much for the
Vanagon, but rather to keep me from getting any newer car. Newer cars,
as you may know, approach 99% plastic. :<) If you view you vehicle as a
lifetime investment, better get an old one!
I suspect that the WholeThing of Plastic ROT may be affected by climate,
possibly high summertime temps or possibly ozone or some other factor.
Do northern cars have less trouble than southern ones?
JOEL! time for a poll! Possibly chart it by maximum high ambient temps?
Al Brase

Sam Walters wrote:

> Chris and other list members,
>
> I drove my 84 Vanagon as my daily driver for almost 20 years and pushed
> the reset button while moving after about 85% of my refills.  It never
> broke.  That van has gone to the crusher.  In my other vans I do it less
> because conventional list wisdom says I am going to break it if I do,
> but I still do it while moving sometimes, although I usually do it with
> the clutch in and coasting for some reason.  I just usually forget to
> push the reset while in the station and remember after I am moving and I
> don't want to get out of traffic to stop and reset it.
>
> How do we really know that this resetting while moving breaks tripmeters
> and that it is not just that some of them break because they are old and
> we are assuming that it is because they were reset while moving that
> caused the breakage.  I don't ever remember seeing this explained, but
> just seeing the assertion that they will break if you do this.  But
> maybe it has been explained.
>
> If someone has explained this in the past, just point me to the post by
> telling me about when you wrote and the user name you had at the time.
> I'll look it up.
>
> In the meantime, I'll try to be good and reset my tripmeter in the gas
> station just to be safe - but inquiring minds want to know, do I really
> have to do this?  :<)
>
> Sam
>
> --
> Sam Walters
> Baltimore, MD
>
> 89 Syncro GL
> 85 Westy Weekender
>
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