I bought my old lady a 97 accord from craigslist. i bought the car cheap but it has a lot of problems. one thing i cant figure out is the rpms. they are way too high i've been reading some posts that say it's normal but i dont think so. when at a full stop its normal and i barely tap the accelerator and it's jumps to like 2500.

 

Sounds like your throttle is sticking open a little bit. Clean the throttle body & throttle cable with some throttle body cleaner.

 

IF you're lucky? enough to have one of the rare V6 versions of the Accord, you could have the wrong speedo cluster assembly (L4).
The L4 cluster expects to see 4 "counts" per revolution while the V6 version is calibrated for 6.
If you install a four cylinder cluster (Honda manuf) into a V6, it will read 150% (50%) higher than what it should.

Either way, you're most likely going to have to replace the unit (Ebay) since the signal isn't quantified, massaged or processed by anything along the way. It may be shared, but the cluster "sees" the signal direct from the Distributor.

P