Dead Speedo

[croosr]

My speedometer seems to have died. I was cruising home from work yesterday afternoon and noticed that my speedometer was reading 0 mph. I has worked fine previously. Is there a standard fix for this? Is this a common problem? Do I have to rip the dash apart? I'd appreciate any help. Thanks.
Howard

 

[T-n-T]

Lately I seem to be experiencing the same thing, only mine seems to "come back to life" eventually. I must say it is annoying though.

Tony

 

[warmpancakes]

if it comes and goes you can try lubricating the cable if that doesnt work there are places that can fix clusters, We have a real good one in the detroit area Ken

 

[Daron]

I had this happen in the Sy, along with the voltage indicator. I removed the cluster and cleaned all the contacts, from the gauge, to the connection to the dash. Just use a pencil eraser for the connections, and get the gauges snug on the circuit board. That happened to fix my gauge issues, but it is possible that the gauge is bad, or the sender is hosed.

 

[Falco]

Beside what Daron suggested you could check/clean the connector at the VSS. Driver's side in the transfer case.

If it doesn't help you could check the connectors at the DRAC (mounted on the back of the ECM). Or AFAIR there were issues with the needle dropping off.

HTH,
Falco
Sy #2613

 

[croosr]

Falco,

You win the prize. The problem was a broken wire at the connecter that plugs into the DRAC on the back (front?) of the ECM. I've had the ECM pulled out for a while because I've been messing around with different custom chips. I guess the speedo wire was the shortest and was under some tension as the ECM was flopping around during many launches and WOT blasts.

Anyway, I started looking at the ECM after the speedo died (because it was easy to look laying on the floor) and found a broken wire. I wasn't sure what that wire was for, but after checking the wiring drawing in the shop manual, I found that the light blue / black stripe wire was the connection that drives the speedo.

That was the easy part. I could not get the little metal connector out of the plastic plug housing. After a lot of different approaches, I finally went to Radio Shack and bought a real fine point soldering iron and was able to solder the broken wire to the connector, without removing it from the plastic plug.

Sooo, I'm back on the road knowing how fast I'm going. I appreciate everyone's suggestions. The lesson learned for me is to support the ECM when it's pulled out of the dash so the wires don't get stressed. Later.

Howard

 

[Tooky]

On 2001-11-24 01:35, croosr wrote:
The lesson learned for me is to support the ECM when it's pulled out of the dash so the wires don't get stressed. Later.

There was talk of getting the ECM so far out that it can lay down on the floor loosely. Mine never pulls out that far, so it is critical for me to support mine. I use a giant pile of blankets and pillows, works well enough for me. Some day I will find out how to pull that baby all the way down though.

 

[keith455]

Or you could do something like this.
http://www.syty.net/personal/Typhoon/my_ty_page9.htm

 

[Windedv6]

I went the long route. I extended all the wires and mounted mine under the seat as well as rebracketed the seat for an additional 4 inches of travel. The new brackets have studs on them so I can take the seat out in less than a minute.

I thought about having some cables made to extend the harness so ppl could just buy them and plug them in. The plugs themselves are available. I didn't follow through with the extention harness idea (making, selling) as I switched to a speedpro.

_________________
Windedv6
93ty #883

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Windedv6 on 2001-11-25 15:57 ]</font>