Speedometer troubles
 

the thread title is pretty self explanatory, but here goes-

I have a '94 2wd PU with a 22re and 5 speed manual. When I got it a few months ago, the Speedometer was already acting weird. 9 times out of 10, when I went to it for the first time that day, the speedometer wouldn't move at all, but then anywhere from like 2 minutes to 30 minutes of driving later, it would pop up to the speed I was going all of a sudden, and work for the rest of the day. if i left it parked for a hour or so, when i got back in it would stay at 0 again, but start working properly within 5 minutes. Some days it would work fine all day long with no problems, but it had the problem almost every day.

So now, a few months later, it has gotten much worse. The last 2 or 3 weeks, the speedo hasn't worked at all, with the exception of 2 days, once about 4 days ago, once about 2 weeks ago. All of my other gauges still work fine, and always have.

One other thing- when the speedo is working, and I hit the turn signal, the needle will jump down to 0 for a split second right as the signal turns on, then go right back to where its supposed to be.

Does anyone know what could be wrong? Sorry about the long post btw :P

Your speedo uses an electric sensor, and its prob whats wrong. Mine did the same

so would that mean a bad gauge, or bad sending unit?

See if you have a speed sensor on your transmission.

In my experience, the speedometer head (cluster) will fail before the sending unit. Sorta like the igniter, it's an expen$ive exercise to replace the sending unit, only to find out that it was not the culprit. The speedo head is no trivial purchase either! You might want to check the electrical connectors on the back of the cluster, to rule out an intermittent short.

Have you checked out the Pick-n-Pulls in Dallas and Fort Worth? My local Pick-n-Pull is GREAT! They put out Toyota trucks often! But, any "SR5 cluster"is going to get snagged quick! I see that the FW yard has "All Parts 50% Off" every Wednesday - Boner!

Good Luck!

The connectors are fine, on both ends, the speedo and trans.

so I guess this means I have to replace my gauge.. poo. okay, so now i need to know what years and models gauges will fit my truck, like I said, its a 94 2wd PU with the 22re and a stick. anybody have a list of what will work?

The behavior with the turn signal/speedo interaction is weird, like electrical short weird. On the other hand, the degradation over time, and lapses at morning warm up, are consistent with a failing speedometer head. Not to worry, with enough parts, anything, and everything, will be fixed.

For a donor: Any '92-'95 22RE truck with a electronic speedometer should do. If you're considering a base model cluster (no tac, etc.), one from a 3VZE truck should work (no tac to hack). What needs to be manifested is a '92-'95 "SR5" 22RE electronic speedo cluster (Do NOT forget the replace the oil pressure switch with a oil pressure sending unit, if you're doing the "SR5" upgrade from the austere base model cluster!) (Folks call it a SR5 Cluster, but it came on Deluxe models as well...)

Apparently, the cutoff for cable driven vs. electronic speedometers was not a specific date, so, especially for '92, a given truck may, or may not, have the electronic speedometer. Crawling under the truck, and eyeballing whether there is a sending unit, instead of a cable, on the tranny tailshaft, is a surefire method of determination (or have the cluster in hand, to see if it is cable driven, or not). 4Runners may be the bastard child here; I pulled a cable driven cluster from a '95 4Rnr Limited.

I'm sure anotherjeff has more experience in this than I do, but when my 94 pickup (3VZE and 4WD) had your symptoms, the problem was in the SENDER, not the panel.

Do you have cruise control? On my 6cyl, when the speedometer sensor went out it took the cruise control with it. If the problem was in the panel the cruise would have still worked. (Though your 4cyl may be wired differently.)

Unfortunately, the sender was $315. (I wanted the cruise control; otherwise I would have just gone with a GPS for that money.) Double unfortunately, you can't return electrical parts, so you want to be confident of your diagnosis. (And as bad as $315 is, I doubt it's as bad as swapping a panel to find out that's not the problem either.) There is a way to test it directly, but you'll need a signal generator to simulate the signal from the sender (then if your speedometer gives the "right" reading, the problem is in the sender.)

Good luck.

- Jeff

I just started having this problem today. The speedometer will randomly bounce and sometimes cut out all together. I have a 93 pickup with the electronic sender. I pulled it out in a parking lot today and checked it out, gears look fine, electrical connector looks fine. So it's most likely the gauge itself going bad?

I should also mention I can be sitting in neutral with the engine idling and it will sometimes jump all over the place as well. Seems kind of weird for a connection or the sender since it's not even spinning or under vibration at that point.

I too am another victim of this. It was really bad at first but then it just fixed itself one day and i haven't had problems with it yet. The only time i notice it is when i use my turn signal.

similar issue, just no intermittent problems
 

I know the last post on this was three years ago but I just recently joined yotatech so yeah...

I have a 94 pickup 22re 2wd 5 speed, it just stopped working while driving on the freeway a few months ago and hasn't done anything else, the odometer doesn't work either so I thought it was the sensor.

So I jacked up the rear and set it on jack stands and tested voltage at the sensor and its working, I traced the wiring and didnt find any pinches or burnt areas so I'm going to remove the cluster and test there for voltage but I need the time to do it. Since I'll be doing that I'm gonna buy a new cd player since I have a 10 year old sony. If it turns out it is the cluster I'd like to replace it with one that has a tach.

Intermittent Spedo issues...
 

So I've got a 1994 22RE 5spd that just did the same thing with the Speedo dropping to 0 when I turn on the blinker. Curiously, it only started happening when I turned on the headlights. So off to Google I went... Stumbled upon another thread of similar symptoms and as it turns out this problem seems to be related to the Turn Signal Flasher Assembly (81980-32010). I've yet to replace mine to confirm, but will let you know.

This is based on what I've just read over here.

Good luck!

Im having a similar symptom but different problem on my '86 4x 22refi auto trans. My needle was jumping from 0-70 and all points in between when doing any speed. I found the tranny fluid almost off the dipstick. It did register a bit at the end of stick. It wasn't low enough to cause slippage. I filled it up and took a few trips around my block (3 miles total) and it started working properly again. My question is:: Does the speedo cable suck up tranny fluid for lubricant? Or are they sealed with grease inside of them?

I have a 1994 Toyota pickup (3.0/auto) and my speedo did the same thing, intermediately working when it wanted to and eventually almost not at all save a rare occasion here and there. After much reading thru YotaTech and not finding any solutions to my problem (most said to replace speed sensor but I saw many that had to the tune of about $100 and it didn't work....they still had the same problem), I decided to just pull the inst cluster out, split the plastic housing on the cluster and pull the speedo itself off of the rest of the cluster (4 screws on back of cluster mother board). I then took the speedo which has its own board on the back of it and sprayed WD-40 on a toothbrush and then scrubbed all of the soldered connections on the speedo board with the WD40 soaked toothbrush. Mind you the toothbrush wasn't dripping wet with WD40 but just enough to scrub the solder bright and shiny. I did scrub some crusty stuff off of the board also and then lightly polished with a paper towel as much as I could. I then reattached the speedo to the mother board and put the cluster back together and reinstalled it and Wah-Lah.....my speedometer works like new and has worked perfectly ever since I did this with no further actions necessary. Since I had the WD40 and toothbrush already the whole process cost me exactly Zero $. Try it out....silly as it sounds it may work for you also.....I hope it does!

How I fixed my intermittent speedometer
 

I experienced this same exact problem with the speedometer on my 1994 4x4 Toyota PU with electronic speedo.....speedometer intermittentenly worked and just got worse and worse until it barely ever worked. I searched every forum and thread that I could but couldn't find an actual solution that had worked. Most said to change the speed sensor unit on the trans but seemed those that did that just wasted their money as it didn't work except in a case or two. So, I decided to take things into my own hands. I removed my instrument cluster, then I split the plastic cover in half at the seam and removed the mother board with the guages and speedo attached. I then removed the speedometer itself from the mother board (4 philips screws on the backside of the mother board) and pulled the speedo out which has its own board on the back of it. I then took an old toothbrush and sprayed the bristles with WD40 and proceeded to scrub the back of the speedo board with the WD'd bristles. I removed any crud that was there and sort of just scrubbed and polished all of the solder connections on the back of the board. Then I wiped it down as best as I could with a cloth. I put speedo back on the mother board and then the cluster back in the plastic case and reinstalled it all into the dash and buttoned everything back up figuring it was either going to work or not. Upon completionl, I started the truck up and drove off down the road and WAH-LAH!...the speedo worked perfectly and, it has continued to do so since. In that I already had the toothbrush and the WD40, my cost for this fix was zero $!!! I know this will sound hokey to some of you but this is not a joke and if you are having the intermittent speedo issue, I implore you to try this process on your cluster and see if it works for you.,,,I mean....what have you got to lose. Hope this works as well for you as it did for me.