toyinhawaii

I've had my 93 3.0 4x4 auto excab for about a 1 1/2 yrs..built it back up from the block up...its all stock, engine,rims and bfg allterrains. the only real thing after that was a bad speed sensor. At times i would have eratic shifting and at times the speedometer would go all stupid.Didn't pay to much attention to it then, I thought the speed sensor was only related to the speed itself,but finally, the last 4 months or so it got really bad (really eratic shifting,speedometer dial all crazy) and 2 weeks ago finally replaced it. The prices (new) where between 200-350 bucks..finally found one in the boneyard for $50. After I got it back together (the engine) it would give me about 14mpg..within the last year up till now i'd get 11-12 mpg...since i replaced the speed sensor..2 tank fulls ago .i'm getting a good 16-17 mpg. Man-O-Man what a change, to think that this small gadget can cause so much pain.

jpmountainboy

you were just getting inaccurate mile readings before because of the spazed out sensor, so now its more accurate.

meaning if it was not reading some increments of miles when temporarily not working, when you compared the miles on the odometer to gallons it would mathematically show less than actually occurring. Once changed, the odometer is showing more miles...larger Numerator = more MPG's

toyinhawaii

Actually i was aware of it, when i did notice it was going out of wack, i compared it to my vans odometer reading (home to work), lately it would read 30mph when i acually knew i was going around 55-60 and also the odometer read half of what my actual mileage traveled was. I was baseing my mpg on the known distance from my home to work x the days, and then at fill up, I calculated the known miles driven divided by the gallons at fill up,thus getting my 11-12mpg. The reason I suspected the sensor played a part in the shifting was after i changed it I noticed a big difference in smoother shifting and more normal sequence. For example:

Before- it would shift up into 4th @ around 50mph @ around 3100rpm
Now- it would shift up into 4th @ around 42mph @ around 2600rpm

Before- 52-56mph @ 2600 rpm
Now- 52-56mph @ around 2200 rpm

And when passing it would go into in 3rd and stay there longer before it shifted back into 4th

Now it would stay in 4th,maybe go into 3rd, but shift back in 4th more quickly.

It was kinda unbelivable going from 11-12mpg to 16mpg,but like i said ,just did my second fill on this changed out speed sensor and i do feel a big difference in the way it shifts now ,compared to before...a whole lot better...