My truck has about 7,000 miles on it since I got it back in March and I have yet to get the speedo working properly.

It now has a newly rebuilt motor in it so it's time to take care of this!

Sequence of events:

1. Got the truck with a broken cable, changed the cable (used an aftermarket DORMAN cable if this matters... doesn't bind at all or anything)
2. Speedo/odo assembly that came in the truck jumps around like crazy even with a new cable in it, doesn't stabilize until above 50.
3. Pulled the stock assembly and put one in from a cable driven mid 90s runner, worked ok at first..
4. After about 2,000 miles on it the 4 Runner gauge started wobbling around in the low speed range and then having occasional big surges at speed. It would go from 65 to 60 and then back up to 65 in under a second.

Then one day on a big hill while downshifting after another surge the speedo just went to zero. Started making terrible noise in another few hundred miles. Pulled the cable off and the cable seems fine so something must have broken off inside of the speedo/odo assembly itself.

Question: If I run all of my own wiring is it possible to just convert to electric and be done with this?

If not, or if someone else has had similar problems but dealt with them, how would you do this repair in order to be more or less sure that it won't give you any problems for a loooong time? (100k + miles pref..) Swap in a super low mileage cluster or what?

TIA for taking the time

 

I'm having similar issues with my '89 v-6 automatic. Replaced cable and cluster and the damn thing still makes noise and doesn't read accurately.

I'm planning on swapping a five speed into it out of a '92 Runner and swapping to an electric speedo at the same time.

I believe that as long as you are capable of running the wires from the speed sensor to the electric speedo gauge cluster than everything will work just fine, as long as both rigs had the same size tires and gear ratio.

I have a donor rig, so I'm using the Runner gauge cluster, speed sensor, and even the plug for the gauge cluster that the speed sensor connects to. I'll just solder it into the rest of the harness, unless I can figure out how to put the extra pins into the older gauge plug.

Toyota is ussually fairly good about making things interchangable, so it shouldn't be too bad.

 

the electric speed and the cable driven are one and the same. the electric has a pick up sensor on the transfer case and wires up to the driver side floorboard, there ir goes into a motor that turns a cable that winds up the speedo, that little motor might be your culprit or a bad ground. mine is a 95 and has this setup if it is strictly a cable and no electronics it can be the cable or the speedo itself

 

Thanks for the replies.

Had no idea the electric one is driven by a motor, instead of just having a needle connected to a coil which moves when the resistance changes.

That makes the idea of swapping to electric a lot less appealing.

The cable that I have in there right now actually works fine, it ain't broke, what's broken is the actual speedo itself which I pulled from that 4 Runner.

Guess the best bet is to just find the lowest mileage speedo that I can.

I have heard of the cables breaking all the time, but I'm curious to hear how many other people have had the gauge itself break..