My speedometer will occasionally go limp and drop to either 0 or go past 125, depending on which side the needle was pointing to before it went limp. It always comes back on, and this issue has been happening for about a year and a half. It started out being extremely rare that it would stop working, but as of this past June or July it has suddenly become very frequent, and takes far longer to come back to life. Initially, it would drop and come back to life in less than a minute, but its taking far longer as of recent. If I stop the engine and restart it while the speedometer is dead, the P light on the transmission switch will flash what looks like 16 or 17 times, after illuminating as always on startup.

I've also noticed it seems to be more sensitive in the heat, and I've had the speed sensor replaced, and last week the Nissan dealer had took out the gauge cluster, who claimed to clean and tighten the connections, but told me there's nothing definitively wrong with the car and there's nothing they can do to guarantee a repair. A few days after the repair, it went limp again, on and off.

Has anybody had a similar experience? At this point I'd believe its not the speed sensor, but I don't totally believe that the dealer in saying that there's no possible way to repair it, especially since the master tech offered to buy my car three times in a matter of two days. Any thoughts or tips on what I can check or do?

 

Probably bad solder joints in the speedometer circuit board. You can re-flow those solder joints if you take the speedometer out of the cluster. Resoldering the joints requires soldering thru a magnifying glass. An electronics repair shop could do it if you are not comfortable doing it.

 

take instrument panel out - it's pretty straight forward.

On the back there's copper screws on copper contact pads on the flexible PCB. Snug those first then tuck it back in there and go for a test drive before putting things back together or re-soldering joints. If that doesn't fix it and you need to resolder joints I'd also clean any contacts/connectors with contact cleaner as well.

I highly recommend Dexoit D5 contact cleaner : great stuff.

 

While I have not had much luck tightening those copper screws, it is worth a shot. Just make sure you don’t overtighten them, as the washers can cut through the flexible pcb, or damage the speedometer circuit board that they screw into.

 

Thanks for the help. Turns out it was no good. Do I bought a used one at the local auto dismantle yard for $20. Works fine so far.

 

I suggest keeping your old unit and having it repaired. I went through four used speedometers before redoing the solder on my old units.

 

after digging around on the forums and my repair manual, i went on to put the car into self diagnostic mode, and the code is "vehicle speed sensor circuit disconnected/disabled/shorted", or something along those lines. Maybe there really wasn't anything wrong with the actual cluster, and I just have to tackle the speed sensor itself. Anybody else have a similar experience. Gonna try tinkering with that and ill share my results.
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