travisamorgan

Ok i did a 3.4 swap and somehow fried my speed sensor and my speedometer in the dash. I have already replaced the sensor and the speedometer with no luck. I redid the wiring between the two also. I got the speedometer at a junkyard and when i was taking it out of the donor vehicle i broke off the trip reset button thingy so i want to replace the speedometer anyway. I tested the sensor and did get the signal out and had power to it and a good ground. I had the signal and power and ground at the speedometer also. I tested the speedometer as per the manual and as far as i can remember it worked, though it may not have. I did buy a cheaper speed sensor from ebay that was supposed to fit m 94 truck but the housing was too big and i just transfered the internals from the new sensor over to the old housing and it still worked.

I gave up for a while since i havent found or thought of a good solution or problem to try to test for. I quit worrying about it but would like to be able to get y cruise control working and actually have a trip and odometer.

I was researching new speedometers to see if buying an aftermarket one and putting an entire custom gauge panel in (gotta save up some change first - kinda pricey). I came across some gps speedometers and also saw some gps sending units. I did my research and found out the toyota speedo works off of 4000 pulses per mile. Some of the GPS senders do have 4000ppm and produce a square wave output signal.

Basically I need to know if anyone has any ideas to what could be the issue on the truck with my current set-up. im gonna test and retry everything tomorrow while im off and redo some other wiring. Also has anyone got any review on the gps senders available? i saw one from autometer and jegs and also a more expensive option called sky-drive.

Any help?

Thanks Travis

vital22re

iTrader: (2)

so the speed sensor sends a signal to the speedo. The speedo then sends a 4pulse signal out to the ecu and cruise ecu. As long as you connect it up at the dash and your conversion wiring is right at ecu you'll be okay. It sound like you mixed the power wire at speed sensor with ground though. I would ohm out your wire to properly trace it and make sure its correct in your swap wiring, make sure your gauges fuse isn't blown and try again.

Innocent Fool

I went with a new radio head unit that has built in GPS.
Screen comes up on the head unit with a full sized speedo. Doesn't work with the cruise but is always 100% correct

travisamorgan

Well after some reading and messing around with the multimeter I found my problem or a list of a few. The wires in the plug for the speed sensor in the transfer case had came loose just enough to not make a good connection. I took the little connectors in the female side of the plug and squeezed them with pliers and fixed that problem. I then went to checking for signal in the kick panel by the ecu. I found power ground and signal there. I pulled the dash apart and tested at the connections in the back of the instrument cluster. I found signal but at the wrong green and red wire meaning I had connected the wrong wire up at the kick panel. I ohmed the other wire and found the correct one. I jacked up one tire and FINALLY I had a working speedometer.

I wanna know if the gps sending unit could hook up the the speedometer in place of the vehicle speed sensor and them in theory it would work the speedometer and if needed cruise.control would work. Id like to have one so when I do tire and gear ratio changes it wont affect my speedometer reading?

Would it work? The have some that will pulse 4000ppm and 3 wire?

scope103

I'm glad you tracked down the problem.

The few GPS senders I've seen seem to run around $200, which is quite a bit cheaper than a replacement VSS1! Supposedly, you just set it for 4000 ppm and hook up three wires.
http://www.jegs.com/p/VDO/VDO-GPS-Sp...T-4aAhM-8P8HAQ
http://www.dakotadigital.com/index.c...rod/prd837.htm
http://www.thetachman.com/

Of course, it would be disappointing to lose speedometer and cruise when going through a tunnel ....

travisamorgan

Yeah but how often do you actually go through a tunnel. The only one I go through is not even as long as my truck and I never go through a bigger one. I read that one of them if it loaes signal it will keep the speedo in the same place til it finds it again so in theory cruise would still stay the same and work properly?

Now I wish I could find my original speedo to put back in since this one is 17000 miles lower on the odometer than what's on the truck. I think I threw it away though.

scope103

Depends on where you drive ;^)

I use a run-of-the-mill Garmin for navigation. As you described, when it loses signal it "holds" the prior speed (and direction; remember these do mapping) for about 10 seconds. Which is NOT long enough for some tunnels I frequent.

More importantly, it often loses signal in the "canyons" of downtown San Francisco. Not that I would ever use cruise control there.

It still sounds like a pretty cool idea; it would be even better if it was an "option" to a regular mapping display. Maps plus your cruise works.

Then if you could hook up the steering to the map .... Oh, yeah, somebody in Mountain View already thought of that!

mt_goat

I had some times this year when my speedo would just go dead. it would start working again just as mysteriously as when it stopped. if I had the cruse control on it would stop working when the speedo stopped too.

After some research I decided I would start with the sender (which in my case is electric,I have an SR5). I noticed there was a lot of oil around the connection to the sender (under the transfer case) so I sprayed it down with brake cleaner inside and out and covered the pins with dielectric grease. it's been several thousand miles now and not one problem since.

Just thought I'd pass that along, I read some guys had fixed the issue by replacing the sender...maybe the connector was just oily and shorting out.

travisamorgan

i got it working. i just had it wired wrong and loose pins on the sender connector.

i want to add cruise control now. i got a 3.4 swapped in from a 99 4runner auto and have all the parts but the cruise control switch. my truck didnt originally have cruise and its a 5speed.

any idea if it would work if i got a cruise switch from a 3.4 and wired up the brake switch to the ecu? or would the cruise not activate since its in neutral as far as the computer knows?

any help??

wyoming9

iTrader: (1)

With this GPS thingy how does the odometer work every time you have loss of signal.

One girl who is a customer says in the area we live and work she has loss of signal quite often.

Just curious??

travisamorgan

True. But I wasnt really worried about the odometer working except for calculating fuel mileage. I have done some thinking and decided not to get one anytime at all. Too much of a hassle in the long run.

bswarm

I'm wondering if an aftermarket electronic speedometer will work if it was wired to the stock VSS. Anyone try that? My odometer works, but the speedometer rarely does. I've looked at a couple that say compatible with vehicles factory speed sensor.