SPIKER

sorry I took a while to get back... I took apart the dash & pulled cluster out, the cable was fine, but found the problem & managed to fix it using electrical tape & super glue. (sorry no duct tape in that fix or binder twine ) it is cable driven and the cable is held into car body by a metal C cut into the back dash area. then there is a PLASTIC spring loaded square drive that is also round on one end. this part broke loose from the speedo drive cable. what it is is a inter connect part that connects the stationary cable mounted location to the dash cluster. the plastic part is PUSHED onto the cable end which cuts small splines into this part. that is where mine failed. this part is a hollow tube with a square hole in one end that has a square peg that slides through it and a spring keeps this square peg pushed out through the closed end of the tube when the open end of the tube is pushed over the speedo cable it makes a spring loaded square drive shaft to let the cluster slip into this open cable and the square spring loaded drive will compress as the cluster slips into the dash mounting location. the spring loaded square drive pin now slips into the back of the speedo to drive the internal gearing of the speedo. anyhow the part of the plastic tube that slips onto/over the splined cable was cracked and would not drive the clusters speedo. so I took it out cleaned heck out of it and used some super glue on the cracked end (it was split on 2 sides and opened up so the cable spun inside the tube.) I then wrapped 2 wraps of good electrical tape around it to hold the tube compressed back to it's original size. I left it dry for a few min and stuck it all back and it now works... this part is only maybe 1" long smaller than a cheap bic pen and the square drive shaft part sticks out maybe making it all 1.4" long and is only about size of a small wood match stick if not a bit smaller. the spring is smaller than that of a click on/off type pen. SO just in case anyone else runs into it the dash came out with some 7 or so screws and some snap/force close to thinking it was going to break something. there was some blind metal snaps under there that has to come loose and I had to re-bend them slightly closed to get them to hold back onto the dash when re-installing the instrument cluster. mark m

hi guys: I have a 90 xe 4x4 auto 3.0 6 in mine last night mine quit working (speedo) but mine appears to have a cable coming out of pass side rear tail shaft of the trans which goes up through the floor board in the fire wall under the pass side foot well. is this similar to you units? mine make too much noise to tell if the cable is spinning or not but it sure does not look like any type of electrical connector it is a cable connector to trans... any clue to best way to find out if it is out of the speedo back side or what is best way to access it? pull instrument cluster? thanks for any help ya can give mark