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This winter something odd is going on with the speedometer in my ’99 Tercel, nothing super serious but in certain conditions it ends up being unusable. Not that great to see 70Km/H in the dash while you’re driving around 45 LOL.
When I start driving to school in the morning and it’s below a certain temperature, my speedometer will start making a sort of scratching noise which speeds up as I accelerate. The colder outside, the worse the noise is. There seems to be some sort of sweet spot around -10 to -14°C in which the speedometer starts acting up and gives an abnormally high reading whenever I drive over 65-75 Km/H. It seems colder temperature won’t mess up the speedometer as much, but it still scratches as loud.
My first guess would be frost building up somewhere in the mechanism during the night, since it always happened in the morning. When I come back from school the noise isn’t nearly as bad if present at all, even if it didn’t get much warmer during the day. Between -10 and freezing point I only hear a faint noise and over freezing point, absolutely nothing.
So I wonder if anybody saw or heard of a similar problem before? My description is pretty much as detailed as it can possibly be. If needed I can do a video while we’re still having fairly cold nights over here.
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Chances are the issue is within your speedometer assembly. You can confirm this by hooking up a scanner and ensure your VSS (Vehicle Speed Sensor) is sending the proper speed information… It probably is….
There are companies that specialize in re-building and repairing the clusters if this bothers you enough… I repaired a GM one by buying a used Instrument Panel Cluster at the pick and pull and sending it to SPECMO to be reflashed/repaired… Kept the old one in so I could still use the car if necessary during the time I sent the cluster to get taken care of…
-Karl
Im not familiar with this vehicle, but Google says ’99 Tercel has cable operated speedometer. Scratching comes from the cable, while turning in its cable housing and after years of wear and tear u got this type of noise. Replace the speedo cable with a new one and it should be ok. About the false readings – i dont really have an idea.
Having been around for too many years I’ve owned many cars with cable driven speedometers. After a few years they all do what you describe. The cable catches in the housing and then it jumps. This gives the false indication. So, normal failure mode. Replacement is the fix.
[quote=”ToyotaKarl” post=92165]Chances are the issue is within your speedometer assembly. You can confirm this by hooking up a scanner and ensure your VSS (Vehicle Speed Sensor) is sending the proper speed information… It probably is….
There are companies that specialize in re-building and repairing the clusters if this bothers you enough… I repaired a GM one by buying a used Instrument Panel Cluster at the pick and pull and sending it to SPECMO to be reflashed/repaired… Kept the old one in so I could still use the car if necessary during the time I sent the cluster to get taken care of…
-Karl[/quote]
+1. This happens on Hondas often as well. After a while the mechanism inside the cluster wears out and needs attention.
Keep us posted on your progress and good luck.
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