My speedometer stopped working yesterday. I would like to find out what might have caused that to happen and what I’d need to do to get it fixed.
Year and color of the car?
That is an electronic speedo, I take it? If so, is the odometer and tachometer still operable?
- It’s no electonic speedo.
Is your trip counter/odometer still going?
Not positive on your particular car but it is likely like most cars of that vintage. It likely has a cable coming from the dash going into the transmission somewhere. Those cable require lubing periodically.
Whatever that cable goes into may no be seated right. That cable could also have snapped, of course. There’s a chance that the speedo is broken or gummed up. Sometimes just violently pushing onto the trip counter reset button may get it going again - I had an old Subie with that problem.
The speedometer is operated thru a driver on the back of the speedometer which gets it’s signal from the Vehicle Speed Sensor. The odometer is driven by a stepper motor on the back of the speedometer that gets it’s signal from the Vehicle Speed Sensor.
If there’s no Check Engine light on with a VSS code, the problem isn’t with the VSS. If the speedometer doesn’t work but odometer does work, the problem is with driver for the speedometer. Which means the instrument cluster requires replacement.
Tester
Ah, it is electronic. Follow Tester’s advice. That makes a lot of sense.
My feeling is that it’s a VSS fault. Just recently, a VSS failed on one of my cars with no indication or symptoms other than an inoperative speedo, odometer, and cruise control. No CEL, no codes no nothing; and the VSS was dead as a doornail.