cretan Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 The speedo on my 94 pathfinder doesn't work until I go over 20 kilometers an hour.sometimes it quits al-together.Is it cable driven or electronic?Any suggestions on what would cause this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
95shakinPF Posted November 27, 2007 Share Posted November 27, 2007 Oh boy! Here we go again!! I've been dealing with the same thing for a while. Its electric not cable driven. Either your vehicle speed sensor could be bad(located in the tailshaft of the tranny) or the speedometer head itself could be bad. Ive done lots of work trying to narrow it down and finally did. I had to get another speedometer head. All the research I've done has lead me to finding the 94-95 models have faulty instrument clusters. If you pull the VSS from the tranny and hook a volt meter up to the 2 terminals on it, you can test it to see if its your problem. Place your meter on a/c voltage and spin the gear. The faster you spin it the higher the volts will climb. If so, its good and your speedometer head is the culprit! If not, the sensor is bad. Anyway, hope i've helped and good luck!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
95shakinPF Posted November 28, 2007 Share Posted November 28, 2007 (edited) Well............any luck? What did ya figure out? Edited November 28, 2007 by 95shakinPF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
94extreme Posted November 28, 2007 Share Posted November 28, 2007 there is also a signal receiving unit in the back of the guage. it may also be the culprit. there is also a minum V when you spin the little gear on the VSS.. getting the VSS out if the tranny TC is a real challenge though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
95shakinPF Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 (edited) Yes your correct! min. voltage is .5volts A/C- IIRC! Edited November 29, 2007 by 95shakinPF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SPIKER Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 Yes your correct! min. voltage is .5volts A/C- IIRC! 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
95shakinPF Posted December 1, 2007 Share Posted December 1, 2007 Hey Spiker, I really dont want to give you any bad info (as I have no idea about a 90 model,mines a 95) but it does sound like yours is cable driven and not electrical. Yes, pull the instrument cluster and unhook the cable/wires going to it. If it has a cable you can drive a few clicks down the road to see if the cable is spinning at all. Then go from there! Good Luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SPIKER Posted December 17, 2007 Share Posted December 17, 2007 Hey Spiker, I really dont want to give you any bad info (as I have no idea about a 90 model,mines a 95) but it does sound like yours is cable driven and not electrical. Yes, pull the instrument cluster and unhook the cable/wires going to it. If it has a cable you can drive a few clicks down the road to see if the cable is spinning at all. Then go from there!Good Luck! 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cretan Posted December 18, 2007 Author Share Posted December 18, 2007 Thanks for trhe info 95shakinPFI have not had time to check vss or speedo yet.Will post findings when i remove the parts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gardoni Posted January 7, 2008 Share Posted January 7, 2008 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... I've had this happen to me twice now. Nissan won't sell the plastic part separately, so it's fix it or shell out ~$80 for a new cable just for the 20 cent plastic part. I repaired mine similarly to SPIKER, but then had another thought after I got everything back together. Next time it happens instead of electrical tape I'll use some heat shrink tubing- should keep more compressive force on it without loosening up [hopefully]. -gardoni Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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