L_U_D_I_AMaxima

iTrader: (3)

Hello folks,
After almost 11 years of ownership my 5th gen has decided to finally throw me a curve ball. For some reason the speedometer quick working on me one day while I was driving on the back roads and had the car on cruise control at about 50mph. Speed dropped to zero and the cruise control light starter to flash. I figured most likely the VSS has decided to finally die. Lets face it the car is about 20 years and has just a tad over 240K miles. Ok, so long story short I pulled the VSS and checked for the obvious visual signs of damaged/broken teeth and bad wiring. Nothing. Everything looked great. So i cleaned the sensor and put it back in the car. Cleaned the P0500 code and took it for a spin. Still no speedometer. I end up ordering a new VSS from Nissan, figured it wasn't worth the hassle of getting an aftermarket one, the OEM sensor was about $35 from Nissan. Swapped the new sensor and took the car for a drive, still no speedometer. Found the diagram off my nissan shop manual and started to trace the problem. I end up hooking up the volt meter to the sensor and took the car for a driver. The new sensor reads about 5.5-6.5v when the car is moving. According to the manual that is within normal range. I also end up doing the self diagnostic on the cluster itself. It passed, the cluster does work. Plugged everything back on, cleaned the code and took the car for a drive. Still the needle didn't move and the code P0500 came back. Weird enough when I lost the speedometer I also lost my back up lights. Something tells me that there is a mechanical problem with the transmission itself rather than electrical, but again when I tested my VSS with the volt meter I could tell that it was working. The new sensor also came with new harness so installed it. The only thing i have not tested yet is if the all of my 4 abs sensors work. I have not hooked up my big scanner to check those. From everything I have read my car only uses the VSS to keep track of the speed. It is 5th gen but it was actually made 09/99 based on the door sticker. Also the only 2 electrical components in the tranny a physically the VSS and reverse light switch. When I use my scanner and check the parameters via the OBD2 port i see that no speed information is being reported to the ECU.

Any ideas?

Murdered01

Not sure if this will help but youre onto something with the abs sensors. I lost half my speed randomly while taking an on ramp pretty aggressively. (I knew one of the rear sensors was bad and thats why the abs light was on, so I replaced it and nothing.) Did some research and found it in my best interest to replace all sensors since theyre cheap and Im not messing around with electrical. Turns out the front two do send the speed ratings. At least on the manual trans. The pass front sensor was ripped in half like someone cut it with a knife. I replaced all sensors and my speedo was back as well as my abs. Hope this helps

L_U_D_I_AMaxima

iTrader: (3)

Well in my case I have zero ABS codes or lights. The ABS systems works as it should.

Murdered01

What im saying is when the front abs/“wheel speed sensor” ripped in half my speedometer read half of the actual speed. When I got the new ones in I was back to normal. Look into it