My speedometer, likes to randomly stop working. it will very very slowly rise until it hits like 135 then just gets stuck. when i turn off the car it resets but when i restart it pops up to 35 and starts again. randomly it will work fine. I do have to replace driver side CV axle... could this be effecting it? argh. i wanna know how slow I'm driving. any ideers?

 

90% chance it's the head. it's an all-electrical system starting with the VSS in the transmission, then just wires to the ECM and wires to the cluster. Mine is a 125mph unit so i couldn't go to 135.. but anyhow, the thing would just drop to 0 or whatever it felt like doing, or bounce around and stuff. I went to JY, got another cluster, swapped the speedo (and later, the small motor that drives the odometer) into my own cluster casing, and no problems since.

i recently retested my old speedo. it was still being strange.

 

your axle shouldn't be affecting it.
it's possibly your speed sensor not functioning correctly.
if you do need a cluster let me know, I've got my old one.

 

My GXE was doing the same thing, it would hang out around 115 then drop to zero, and sometimes it would be correct (I think).

 

is it the 145 white? how much

 

dumb question alert:

theoretically could you hook your tach up in the center speedo position and see if the tach needle rises in the same way that the speedo should? or are their RPM maps way different...

 

white 145 with 137k on it
make an offer
I've got no clue

 

Seems like a whole lot of trouble to go through,when you can just replace the whole unit with a used one,cheap..If it is not the problem,you have an extra fro when it does,or just sell it...


In other words,cars are enough trouble to diagnose,why make it even more complicated?

 

yeah i didn't do that test. i just bought a JY one and put it in after 2 months of primitive diagnosis.

basically if cruise control works reilably even while your speedo is crapping its brains out... then the VSS is fine. unfortunately my CC recently broke. If it even elects to work at all, then the said 'working' is actually just it being stuck in Accelerate mode.

 

Your headlights must of burned out your speedo.....

 

my odometer doesn't work but speedo works. Anyone know if thats a wire needing changed or just a cluster problem?

 

probably either a loose gear or siezed motor (edit: both are inside cluster, part of the odometer subassembly). take it apart and look at each gear that is on those crossways shafts, and if any are cracked, they won't grip the shaft. also remove the little motor and spin it with your fingers and see if it feels smooth or grindy.

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread....odometer+motor
guy had a smiliar problem

but you may still want to take it all the way apart to check your gears in there. it's not hard to reassemble.

 

great. i'll try it.

 

Hey that made it really simple. You should write the repair manual, not haynes

 

haynes sucks, DL the FSM and look at write ups in the stickies and on members sites.

~Alex

 

I have a SE 145 Spedo if your interested... Make me an offer...

 

thanks. I happen to have done a lot of cluster-messing, with more to come in time. I replaced another make/model cluster for a guy who had a speedo that either read 0 or 67mph, not a thing in between. I'm kinda thinking my tach is wrong now, because my RPM indicates high although (based on video w/ sound comparison) the pitch seems different per indicated RPM. As in, the engine sounds lower-pitched at 1500-on-the-tach now than it used to. So i'm going to swap my tach and see what's what.

but yeah, this is one area i can offer pretty good advice, as many times as i've had it apart.

 

My speedometer would run normal for a couple of minutes then drop to zero. sometimes go back up to the speed I supposively friving and drop again. Changed the whole unit. Problem solved.

 

Did your tach work fine before you started taking your cluster apart 11ndy billion times?

 

well the tach still seems to work fine (and always has), but i just figured a dying tach that read too high would explain my across-the-board high RPM. I checked resistance on my TPS by the way. it's fine but perhaps a bit mal-calibrated. anyhow, yeah it worked fine before. i swapped my innards into the other casing because the other casing was cleaner. well, the other casing's circuit sheet was cleaner. my original one had glue or something on it.. anyhow, i have a spare tachometer i can swap in, to see if the readings are different. but I suspect that there is still a problem with something because my idle was never jumpy until recently. i will check resistance and ECM wire continuity for my iacv, but i will also check my tach.. this video http://btp.mine.nu/Jared/NewCam/MVI_1785.avi was taken after the last time I messed with my cluster. The only thing i have done with it since taking that video, is that I changed the colored covers on my lights so they are all 4 different.

i only ever took it apart like 4 times though. but that was enough.

oh, and my temp needle is still fluttery sometimes too.

 

cv axle wouldn't cause this problem . Maybe time for a new one. good luck

 

i also have a speedo for sale... it has 228k on it....... that is if the deal falls through..... will sell cheap..

 

I don't mean to hijack this thread but will the 145mph whiteface speedometers from the 92-94 max work on my 90 sohc se (auto)?

 

Plug and play. Its a very common swap. Next time search...

~Alex

 

I once had a problem with my speed sensor. On a GXE the oil filter is strategically located right above the sensor, so EVERY time you do an oil change a bit of oil will settle on the sensor and the electrical connection. This ended up giving me problems where my speedo would drop to zero periodically. A quick pull and clean of the part and sensor gave me a working speedo once again.

Also, is it possible that some of the screws holding the speedo motor assembly to the circuitry on the back of the cluster are loose? If they don't have a good connection, you could end up with a jumpy speedometer.

 

although mine was acting as you described, it turns out mine really was the gauge itself. i paid and drove off with my car, looked down, and it said 0mph.. go figure, it worked during the test drive. but even though it can be the VSS connector, or the screws, it can still be just a bad gauge. i replaced mine in 9-2006 and retested the old one recently and it was still doing weird stuff. now my temp gauge is being weird (drops to C at 5k+RPM and flutters at random times otherwise)