97 TOYOTA RAV4 - Speedometer off & on - $1200 to repair?

MonicaChicago
Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:27:05 +0000
Maintenance/Repairs

I’m having a very frustrating, $$ problem with the speedometer on my 1997 Toyota RAV 4, 4WD, 45000 miles. It was working fine until 2 years ago, when I drove it from Philadelphia to Chicago. On the 2nd day of the drive, the speedometer seemed like it would only go up to about 50mph on the highway, even when I could feel – and tell by how many cars I was passing – that I was really going somewhere around 70mph. A couple months ago, I finally had enough money in the bank to bring the car in to get this looked at. The shop said my instrument cluster had gone bad and charged me about $700 in parts and labor to replace it. Afterward they said that their tests showed it was working just fine. I took the car home and the problem seemed fixed until I drove on the highway above about 50mph, when the same problem happened again – the speedometer would show a speed of about 45mph when I could tell I was really going around 65 or 70mph. I brought it back, they looked at it again and test drove it again, and said that they didn’t witness the problem occurring, so they couldn’t find anything to fix. I took the car home again, and the first time I took a drive onto the highway, same problem again. So I took the car back to the shop a 3rd time, and after several days, they told me that they were finally able to observe the speedometer fail after 45 minutes of test driving and that the speed sensor was failing intermittently. They quoted me about $500 for parts and labor to replace the speed sensor.

Today, they called and told me that with the replacement, the speedometer was working well except for when they took it on a long test drive and after 60 minutes of driving, the speedometer failed again for a few minutes, then started working again.

So, after about 2 months and $1200, it appears that I have a car whose speedometer still doesn’t work 100% of the time. Are these guys ripping me off royally?

6 posts - 6 participants