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400 miles on a quarter tank of gas!

S

steel

New CEG'er
Joined
Dec 2, 2004
Messages
22
Location
Pittsburgh, PA
OK a little misleading but I have the day off of work.... I've searched the forums and was looking for input while I go out and check my car. A couple of days ago my speedometer jumped from 15 to almost 160 then back, I thought here comes trouble and sure enough on the way home it jumped all around and would settle on being pegged out (just above 160). The odometer was keeping pace with the speed and just clicking off mile after mile. I originally thought it was a VSS but I guess that would mean failure and this goes off scale high back to regular speeds. So, now driving about I would say most of the the time I'm doing a little better than 160 then it will settle back down to whatever speed the car is actually doing. I don't see anything else wrong, no codes, the tach works, and like I said the odometer/tripometer is/are keeping pace with the speedometer. I haven't done any work on this car recently and the battery is just over a year old. Any thoughts?
 
steel said:
I originally thought it was a VSS but I guess that would mean failure and this goes off scale high back to regular speeds.
Click to expand...

I would assume the VSS too... The wires on mine were corroded and shorting out... Sometimes the speedo would jump around or be doing like 80MPH while I was parked with the engine off key on, sometimes it would quit all together, and sometimes it worked properly...
 
Well the story continues, I tried to take the VSS out today and I couldn't get it out of the tranny. I couldn't see any 5/16 bolts like the howto's stated and the angle is incrediable (I can't even see much of it no matter if I'm looking above or below). Anyway, driving this afternoon the radio turned off and on 3 times on a 15 minute trip, that has never happened before. I even unplugged the VSS and it just went up to 160 plus most of the time and back to 0 some (at least it never tracked my real speed so I'm pretty sure I disconnected the right thing). I'm starting to think it's electrical again. Thoughts......
 
check voltage to your puter use a test light though so you can load the wires possible wire that is bad and not getting enough voltage to the puter and resetting it, pretty much anything under 8 volts will kill em.
 
Problem solved

Problem solved

Just thought I'd through out the solution for anyone else that searchs and is looking for some answers. I took out the battery again last night to look under the fuse box and started playing with most of the wires (not a particularly good thing). Anyway I decided to cut the tie that was holding the positive and negative cables from the battery together (just zipped tied to keep out of the way) when I noticed that the negative connector screwed into the engine was moving. Well, that's why god created the rachet and wouldn't you know it but it was as tight as can be sooo...... I took off this two or three inch bolt and put some washers on and tightened it back down. Put the car back together and no more speedo or odometer problems, no more radio turning off. So, the long and short of it (no pun intended), it was the main ground for the battery which runs right to the engine block. I hope this helps someone before they replace the VSS or open the instrument panel up. Good luck.
 
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