Thanks to everyone with the broken speedo assistance.

 

The cable was indeed the problem. What I found was... when they rebuilt the transmission about two years ago the speedo cable was routed incorrectly and they managed to tweak the connection at the tranny connection. The mis-routing left the cable resting on the exhaust which burnt the crap out of the cable finally taking it out. Even the steel protective sleeve was fraid from the heat.

 

I also manage to locate a complete speedometer set-up from a 2.3. Couldn't use the rpm or speedometer from it, but I did get to play with the pots for the gauges and ended up with a nicer plastic cover that looks decent after polishing up. 

 

To wrap it up the new cable did fix up the problem and things are working now, except for the gas gauge and it looks like a problem with the equipment in the gas tank and not my cockpit stuff. Using the trip odometer to monitor gas fill-up times.

 

Thans again to everyone. Oh... I also managed to locate a few actual black interior parts to replace a few that I painted (for the constant wear areas like armrests - got a drivers side, but a passenger side would have been so much better.)