speedo gearing and diff question

[stone02]

stone zero two at verizon dot net

or

two one 5 5 two zero 6 seven one eight

[bent]

In hopes of clearing some of this mystery up, all of the US/mph silver dollar speedos I have and have seen are marked either W=1.24 (2002) or W-1.4 (1600). The front side of the 2002 speedos will have the little red shift point marks at 30, 55, and 80mph while the 1600 speedos are marked at 25, 50, and 75mph. So the speedo you have there is just a standard 2002 speedo in MPH. It's a little curious that it is in a US housing (has the brake warning light and test button) and also has a clock (maybe one got by Hoffman's mandatory tach option, or more likely it's Canadian?) but the speedo itself looks standard.

All of the KPH speedos will have different W numbers, since they're geared to click over the odometer 60% faster... As far as why the W number looks to be for a 3.45 diff, keep in mind that all of the early '02 speedometers (basically all of the silver dollar units) were famously very optimistic. All of the period road tests complained about the speedo and odometer being up to 10% fast. I'd guess someone at BMW or VDO goofed when they spec'd the speedo to the gearing/tire size and didn't bother fixing it until the '71 facelift.