All speedometers must be calibrated to make sure the torque created by the magnetic field accurately reflects the speed of the car. This calibration must take into account several factors, including the ratios of the gears in the drive cable, the final drive ratio in the differential and the diameter of the tires. All of these factors affect the overall speed of the vehicle. Take tire size, for example. When an axle makes one complete turn, the tire it's connected to makes one complete revolution. But a tire with a larger diameter will travel farther than a wheel with a smaller diameter. That's because the distance a tire covers in one revolution is equal to its circumference. So a tire with a diameter of 20 inches will cover about 62.8 inches of ground in one revolution. A tire with a diameter of 30 inches will cover more ground— about 94.2 inches.
Calibration adjusts for these variances and is done by the manufacturer, which sets up the speedometer gear to correspond with the factory-installed ring and pinion ratio and tire size. A car owner may have to recalibrate the speedometer if they make changes that make the vehicle fall out of factory specifications (see the sidebar below). Recalibrating a speedometer can be done by manipulating the hairspring, the permanent magnetor both. Generally, the strength of the magnetic field is the easiest variable to change. This requires a powerful electromagnet, which can be used to adjust the strength of the permanent magnet in the speedometer until the needle matches the input from the rotating drive cable.