1950’s Ohmer Taxi Fare Meter

Such a rare find this was! An old 1950’s Taxi meter made by Ohmer. This one was serviced by the company and was just sitting on a shelf waiting to be installed again, and never was.

Here is a video explaining what I knew of it at the time before I did the light restoration.

Here are the before pictures, how I found it.

It was in rough shape but not bad for its age. ( It is as old as my old 51 truck! )

First step was to get the clock mech working good again, and cleaning up the operation.

I pulled the wind up clock section out, and cleaned up and oiled all the moving parts, it now runs snappy and true!

Next the numbers needed some major cleaning, old oil and grease had collected on the digits, so had to scrape them out each by hand, than re paint them and re black the dials. It took the better part of a weekend and over 72 Q-tips to clean the 250 digits!

Now to get the old tapered pin out, so I can get all the parts into paint! Getting the old pin out was a pain, had to use a drift, and a clamp to push it out without deforming it.

With every part removed, I was able to get it all into the sand blaster for cleaning. The plastic was cleaned by hand, it even has old style plex light pipes inside to direct the light to the digit readouts!

Here are the finished shots, with a new paint job! Gloss victory read for the flag, and Hammer finish black for the main body. This felt true to the original looks I was able to find online.

Here is a final walkthrough of the finished meter, and as I learned more about it.

Next steps? I will need to build or a find a 6V 2.5Amp DC power supply to run the lamps, and may install a synchronous motor inside to run the ‘driveline’ mech so it will display miles traveled when the switch on the front is hit. Stay tuned!