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Old 03-29-2012, 12:28 PM   #37
zacstert
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: brooklyn, New York
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Re: 99 wagon speedometer works when it wants to, HELP

Another unhappy Subaru owner, except that the car didn't cost me anything. My speedo went out about 2 years ago, and before I had a chance to get it fixed we bought ourselves another car and stopped using the Subaru. We had brought it in for something, and the estimate we got back just made it not worth the cost at the time.

Fast forward to 3 months ago and I finally started the car up again after sitting unused for those 2 years, and took it out for a short spin. I then brought it to a mechanic and for a hefty fee got it in like new condition. The car has only 50k miles on it, lost miles to the speedo notwithstanding (not more the 2-3k). The ONE thing he couldn't fix was the speedo! He wanted to send out for a replacement head, but that it would take a few weeks, but in the meantime my son needed the car so we couldn't wait. It was still mostly working at that point anyway.

We drove it to Florida from NY and the speedo would kick in as soon as we hit 50mph and keep running all day. But once down there my son said it never worked. We drove it back to NY last week and it worked maybe over 50 miles of the trip, but while it was working I noted the speed vs the RPM and was able to judge speed on the tach.

I took the speed head out this afternoon, checked the green wire, checked the connector, looked at the traces, tried the screw in the connector tricked mentioned elsewhere, all to no avail. I'm wondering too about the ground screw, it was fully oxidized. That in itself should have at least been fixed by unscrewing/rescrewing but not that I can tell. I put it all back together and everything else still works.

I'm going to try hard wiring from the green wire to the board, and also hard wiring a ground to the chassis and see if that'll do it.
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