95 Lumina Odometer Not Working

Hey everyone,

Well I just moved to S.C for college, and picked up a 95 grey Lumina with around 80k miles. Now the problem is, I noticed after I bought the car, is the odometer and the trip counter doesnt work. If you play with the trip reset I can get it to work, but if I shut it off it wont work again.

Any help? Mabye just a loose wire or something? I hope its something that can be fixed pretty easy. Im pretty peod as the dealer said nothing was wrong with the car besides the AC, so who know how many miles it really has.

Thanks alot I appreciate it.

Does the speedometer work normally? IIRC, the odometer and trip odometer ar mechanical, correct? They are not LCD?

Yep, the speedometer works fine, but the odometer and trip odometer dont, and yes they are mechanical.

Anyone? I just spent the last hour taking apart everything and took off the front panel. It seems the gears and mechanism work fine, you can spin the gears and everything goes up or down how it should, my only guess would be the little motor to move the gears has seized up or something.

Any luck finding the parts?

oh, man, take it to a mechanic and have it fixed, and sell it. As something like that could mean the car has a million miles/kilometers on it, and no one really knows for sure. Fix it and sell it just how you bought it, (with 80km on it).

Well the previous owner kept all his reciepts of inspections up to 2003 and at that time it had 78k on it, so if it broke then at the worst its only got 3 years of time on it, but who knows.

oh man. theres also the possiblility that someone broke it trying to roll it back. some people like to tamper with odometers when their trying to seel used cars.

bad deal :( If finding another car would be easy for you, I'd agree with tblake: sell it or trade it in at a dealer. I think most people wouldn't mind screwing a dealership for once! ...now the tables have turned! However if it runs good and the previous owner has maintence records, it's probably not a big deal. You might be able to get a new odometer installed, making sure to record the mileage on the old one first.