Odometer repair?

P

pvt num 11

Finally driving it
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Okay, before I crack open my dashboard and rip the cluster out - my speedometer works, but the odometers do not. Probable causes could be the odometer motor or geartrain, correct?

Anybody ever had to deal with this?

I have a donor gauge cluster from a 1989 Firebird, and the mileage is almost exactly the same, but the speedometer is a 120 unit, versus our 140 units. I'm a bit reluctant to remove an odometer unit out of a cluster and end up picking up millions of little plastic bits.
 
I had the same on mine, the small motor in there where dead ... you can replace just the motor (which I did from another cluster I had) wihtout reseting the milage or anything so I would go for that first and see if it takes care of the problem.
 
Eh, the worm gear stripped out the drive gear in the cluster. Swapped the faceplate and the electronics board but I kept the donor gauge and odometer gearing - and the mileage - so I should find out shortly if I really do sixty when it says sixty. The wife is going to follow me and report how I do. At least it all works, but I think I bumped the left turn indicator bulb, as it no longer lights up. Drat - next time, I'll ensure all indicators work BEFORE screwing everything back together...

On an unrelated note, i failed my safety check (duh, I have no plates) but I also need rear tires. I'm thinking about staying with the BF Goodrich T/A KDW ones, even though they're pricey!
 
If the wife doesn't have time, just use the scanmaster mph output to compare while your driving.
Bob
 
FWIW.. the speedo on the tta is an electronic speedo. Meaning it works of the VSS. So if the VSS says 60 MPH.. then the speedo and ecm and cruise control are all seeing 60 MPH. The only way the speedo would be wrong, is if you pulled the gear off of the VSS and swapped it for a different pitch or changed the tire height.

HTH
 
Well, I had to pull the needle off to swap the face - so I'm basically all I need to see is if the needle is on the gauge correctly. And, looking at the two PCB's, one of the IC chips is different and a few resistors are of different values - probably becasue one was a 120 and the other as a 140, with the same swept area under the gauge. Wish I had taken pictures of the TTA PCB when it was still out... So yeah, I see you point about the VSS gearing, as I didn't change any of that, but I found that even though the actual gauge itself is the same, the circuit card isn't. Not wanting to chance it, I reused the original one.
 
Jan,
My odometer quit working during the last gas fill up. I reset the tripmeter and after a nice 10 mile drive, I added 0.0 miles...wtf.

You are the man. I found a low mileage cluster on ebay (110 miles) from a wrecked 92 V6 bird. I took the TTA cluster apart and couldn't find any broken teeth so I swapped over the electric drive motor and after a drive around the block the odometer is working again.
I am never resetting the tripmeter again...LOL
Thanks,
James
 
SuperTTA said:
Jan,
My odometer quit working during the last gas fill up. I reset the tripmeter and after a nice 10 mile drive, I added 0.0 miles...wtf.

You are the man. I found a low mileage cluster on ebay (110 miles) from a wrecked 92 V6 bird. I took the TTA cluster apart and couldn't find any broken teeth so I swapped over the electric drive motor and after a drive around the block the odometer is working again.
I am never resetting the tripmeter again...LOL
Thanks,
James
Click to expand...


Glad to be of help James, easy fix for sure ... I had about 100k on mine when it went .... neadless to say I got a couple of spare speedos for future use :)
 
Update,
For some reason I drove 80 miles today and the first 40 miles it didn't move, but on the way home I went 40 miles and only 5 miles added to my odometer.

I didn't notice any broken or stripped teeth when I changed the little motor. It worked when I did a brief drive around the block. But last weekend I drove about 10 miles and it didn't move. It seems to only move 1 mile every 8 miles.

I was thinking about taking the odometer board from the 120 mph speedo and put it on the 140 to see if it is the stock board not sending a correct signal.
Then I'll buy another 140 mph cluster and change the board (if it works)

Or, does anyone know how to roll forward an odometer. The spare cluster I bought only has 100 miles on it, but my car has 77000. I want the correct mileage.
Later,
James
 
DON'T WANT TO HIJACK

Enjoying the speedo talk. Any thoughts on why I have a 10 mph difference between the scanmaster and speedo at 60 mph. At lower speeds the difference it less or not as pronounced. From feel and traffic it appears the scanmaster is correct and the speedo is reading high. My very basic ECM knowledge would tell me the source of both readings are the same signal. This is my next problem to tackle any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
SuperTTA said:
Update,
For some reason I drove 80 miles today and the first 40 miles it didn't move, but on the way home I went 40 miles and only 5 miles added to my odometer.

I didn't notice any broken or stripped teeth when I changed the little motor. It worked when I did a brief drive around the block. But last weekend I drove about 10 miles and it didn't move. It seems to only move 1 mile every 8 miles.

I was thinking about taking the odometer board from the 120 mph speedo and put it on the 140 to see if it is the stock board not sending a correct signal.
Then I'll buy another 140 mph cluster and change the board (if it works)

Or, does anyone know how to roll forward an odometer. The spare cluster I bought only has 100 miles on it, but my car has 77000. I want the correct mileage.
Later,
James
Click to expand...

James, could be as you suspect the electronics so swapping the PCBs should work and you can detirmin if that is the issue or not.

Yes you can easily remove to "rolls" if you look at the end of the shafts where they sit in the sheetmetal part you can just use a small screw driver to pry the tabs open lift out the shaft with the odometer "rolls" and set it to whatever you like and put it back and push the tabs in place again and you are done with it.

Hope you get it sorted ... after I had to do mine I got 2 spare ones just in case :)
 
1tufam said:
DON'T WANT TO HIJACK

Enjoying the speedo talk. Any thoughts on why I have a 10 mph difference between the scanmaster and speedo at 60 mph. At lower speeds the difference it less or not as pronounced. From feel and traffic it appears the scanmaster is correct and the speedo is reading high. My very basic ECM knowledge would tell me the source of both readings are the same signal. This is my next problem to tackle any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Your speedo been apart and the needle not put back in the exact correct place you think?

The speedo and the scanmaster get their signals from the same sensor in the transmission ... scanmaster if I remember correct get the signal from the ECM that is feed from the same 1 to 4 buffer that the speedo gets it signal from ... the 1 to 4 buffer gets the signal from the speedo sensor ...
 
Second update.
I had to use the odometer from the 110 mile car. The little angle cut gear that meshes with the motor's gear froze on the shaft and was soft (yellowed).
The angle cut gear that meshes with the odometer motor out of the 110 mile cluster was still white.
I set the mileage to what my car has (I ended driving out the pin above the odometer with the little black gears in it that holds the odometer in place, rolled the odometer and put the pin and black gears back in....my hands were shaking after this...lol
Anyway, it seems to be fixed again. Hopefully it stays that way.
Yeah!
Anyway, I got an education on the internals of a 86-92 speedometer/odometer and now I am not afraid to tear one up.
James
 
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