1996 DX odometer problem

Here's a head scratcher... the odometer in my 1996 Toyota Camry DX w/ 2.2 liter four & 5-speed tranny has been going screwy for about the last month and a half. The distance between two mile posts on the highway (one mile) is recorded as 1.6 miles on both the overall-mileage and trip odometers. I only noticed it when I realized the incredible distances I was covering between fillups at the gas station… would that that were true!

Some background... I bought her on ebay from NJ two years ago w/ 140k miles. I've been driving her on average about 600 miles/wk (99% highway miles) since then & now has 201k on it. I installed a vortex generator in the intake pipe as soon as I got her home 2 years ago and that is the only mod I made to her. Fuel & air filters, plugs, wires, cap & rotor were all changed back then too (no K&N or other trick parts). No ABS on this car either.

I wanna find out what's doing this cuz I don't want it to collect mileage at the rate of one and a half times what I'm actually driving it. My Haynes manual has a small crappy b&w pic of the back of the gauge cluster and it looks all electronic... circuit board & harness plugs; no cable & tumblers that I can see anyways, which is weird because it's not an LCD or LED display but physical tumblers w/ a physical reset button. I’m stumped.

Here's a head scratcher... the odometer in my 1996 Toyota Camry DX w/ 2.2 liter four & 5-speed tranny has been going screwy for about the last month and a half. The distance between two mile posts on the highway (one mile) is recorded as 1.6 miles on both the overall-mileage and trip odometers. I only noticed it when I realized the incredible distances I was covering between fillups at the gas station… would that that were true!

Some background... I bought her on ebay from NJ two years ago w/ 140k miles. I've been driving her on average about 600 miles/wk (99% highway miles) since then & now has 201k on it. I installed a vortex generator in the intake pipe as soon as I got her home 2 years ago and that is the only mod I made to her. Fuel & air filters, plugs, wires, cap & rotor were all changed back then too (no K&N or other trick parts). No ABS on this car either.

I wanna find out what's doing this cuz I don't want it to collect mileage at the rate of one and a half times what I'm actually driving it. My Haynes manual has a small crappy b&w pic of the back of the gauge cluster and it looks all electronic... circuit board & harness plugs; no cable & tumblers that I can see anyways, which is weird because it's not an LCD or LED display but physical tumblers w/ a physical reset button. I’m stumped.

I believe undersized tires (tires smaller than the stock size tires) would cause this condition I think. I don't know what else it could be.:dunno: :2cents:

Regards,
JOET/CAMRY

See the 1994 Camry manual in the sticky thread at the top of the forum for details on the instrument cluster.

See the 1994 Camry manual in the sticky thread at the top of the forum for details on the instrument cluster.

Hi Brian,

Thanks for your prompt reply. I hate to be a pain about it but I just looked through that thread & didn't find a link relating to this. Could I bother you to post the link you described above in this thread? It would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Erik...

http://www.turboninjas.com/camry/
Look in Body Electrical and Wiring diagrams

The only hit for odometer on a search was on pg 66 of the Body Electrical file. Says use a speedo tester to check for accuracy. If out of limits change speedo. Don't see any external signal for the odo so must be internal to the instrument cluster. Can't see tire inflation or wear creating a .6 difference per mile. Do you have standard size tires installed? Was the speedo accurate? If you travel a steady 60mph for one minute you should hit the mile markers pretty close ie, 60 mph = 1 mile per minute.

http://www.turboninjas.com/camry/
Look in Body Electrical and Wiring diagrams

The only hit for odometer on a search was on pg 66 of the Body Electrical file. Says use a speedo tester to check for accuracy. If out of limits change speedo. Don't see any external signal for the odo so must be internal to the instrument cluster. Can't see tire inflation or wear creating a .6 difference per mile. Do you have standard size tires installed? Was the speedo accurate? If you travel a steady 60mph for one minute you should hit the mile markers pretty close ie, 60 mph = 1 mile per minute.

Well that's what has me puzzled too. Near as I can tell the speedometer is accurate; keeping up w/ highway traffic it's not indicating 100 mph, which tells me odo & speedo are getting info from 2 different sources... almost defies logic but there you go. Tires all match P195-HR14 standard size @ 35 psi & have ~40k miles on them.

The only other thing I can add is that I changed the clutch master cyl. around the same time this occured. Any chance messing around on the firewall behind the dash would've knocked or jarred something to affect the odo? A friend pointed out that 1.6 is the factor between miles & kilometers... could it have gotten 'switched' somehow?

It's set for km's. 1 mile = 1.6km.
1 mile = 1.609344 kilometers

I'll be damned. I never thought of the km angle. As far as jarring something -sure, you can't count it out at this point. Don't know specifics of how you normally switch it if it's possible. Do you have that extra knob on the front of the speedo to switch it? Maybe the mechanism or circuit inside got jossled and screwed the pooch for you. Hey, you never know. Try "jossling" it again. Smacking the dash is a widely accepted adjustment measure to fix dorment gauges on Chrysler minivans. Keep in touch.

It's set for km's. 1 mile = 1.6km.
1 mile = 1.609344 kilometers

I actually did consider adding 'roughly' 1.6 :)