I'll try to make this short and sweet:

Story - was a 600whp 2000 civic Si street car. put it back to stock. has a non-vtec LS motor now with obdI wiring harness running on hondata s300 for the time being. the VSS worked before and nothing has been changed other than the motor itself.

Problem - Speedometer does not work

Attempted Solutions - the ground is good. the power wires are good. they are all receiving the correct voltages according to the honda manual. we tried 3 other VSS's and still no luck. all my fuses are good. the wires from the ecu also are getting the correct voltage. even when plugging in the laptop and reading the data from hondata, the VSS does not register any speeds.

Im kind of out of ideas at this point. has anyone seen this before? any help would greatly be appreciated.

also, i could be wrong, but it should not be a gauge cluster issue since hondata isnt even detected any speed readings from the VSS.

 

bump for help

 

I was thinking tach, 'til I read the last sentence of your post...can't think of anything.

Try the 92-00 Civic forum. It's dead in Tech/Misc.

 

Just a quick thought. Did you replace the entire sensor including drive shaft or just the amplifier? Drive pin still there?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by bschulz &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Just a quick thought. Did you replace the entire sensor including drive shaft or just the amplifier? Drive pin still there?</TD></TR></TABLE>

i have replaced the VSS itself. i have not replaced the other end of the sensor that the VSS plugs into. not the drive shaft. everything else checked out good.

 

I am having the same problem, I have went through the same steps, no luck. I have ran a signal wire straight from the VSS to the ECU and Cluster with no luck. Continuity is good, getting 0-5V when you turn the ignition on and spin the wheel so I know the VSS is sending a signal. I tried 3 different (known to be good) VSS assemblies (gear and sensor) with no luck. Someone please help. This is killing me.

No speedo, no VTEC.
CEL 17

 

yep, same here like yours buddy.

one thing that crossed my mind. i THOUGHT that when you spin the sensor, it was supposed to alternate from 0-5 volts every so many spins or something. mine did not do this... it held a constant 5 volts. however, the honda manual didnt say it should alternate voltage. so maybe i just made that up.

 

Yeah, when I spin the wheel it alternates voltage but never reaches 5v. I know it is not the VSS because I have put 4 (thats right, 4) good working VSS's in the car with no luck. I have tried 3 different ECUs with no luck. I have completely wired it alone, 12v source, ground and a signal wire straight to the ECU. I literally have done everything I know and the OEM Honda Manual knows to do.

Looking at the wiring diagram it should not affect the VSS in anyway, but has anyone ever had this problem and it end up being the speedo in the cluster. The VSS sends a signal to the ECU and to the Speedo and they never cross paths. However this is the only thing I have not tried so I may do it just cause.

Its weird because when I jack the car up and spin the wheel, the voltage fluctuates. Now I pulled the same signal wire that I made for checking the voltage with the car jacked up into the car, drove down the street and put my meter on the wire. NOW IT HAS NO VOLTAGE WHILE ROLLING DOWN THE ROAD!!! When I get home, jack the car up, spin the wheel the voltage from the signal wire is back. How can this be? Ugg.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Have you checked the drive for the VSS. A similar problem happened on my 1992 Accord. The odd thing was, if I braked very hard the speedometer would jump up to about the correct speed, then drop back down to 0mph. I eventually tracked it down to the VSS drive.

If you take out the VSS you will see the unit that spins it. It looks like the end of a post-hole digger (redneck term). One of the ears was broken off, causing it not to spin the VSS.

post hole digger = http://www.hooverfence.com/too...r.htm

 

Haha, yeah good analogy with the post hole digger. That is what it looks like. I had already taken a look at that as well. Thanks for the input.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by slo4door &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

Looking at the wiring diagram it should not affect the VSS in anyway, but has anyone ever had this problem and it end up being the speedo in the cluster. The VSS sends a signal to the ECU and to the Speedo and they never cross paths. However this is the only thing I have not tried so I may do it just cause.
</TD></TR></TABLE>

if your problem is the same as mine, i doubt it would be a speedo problem. since the VSS itself checks out power/ground wise, and it runs a signal straight to the ecu, then Hondata should detect it. mine does not. so im thinking it has to be something between the VSS and the ECU.

Tony1 suggested this - "Try squeezing the pins a little so they are tighter on the vss pins and also try putting some dielectric grease on the pins. It's usually just bad contacts on there that cause the problems."

that could be the problem, but it's been too cold and snowy for me to feel like messing with it

 

I had this same problem, took me forever to find out what was wrong. Turns out my pins in between the connector and VSS were so corroded they were not allowing a signal to pass through. This is not detectable with a multimeter because when you back probe the connector you push the pin all the way to the VSS connections. I fixed the problem by pulling all the wires out of the connector and repining the connector. This is really hard to do with out a repining tool, most shops will do it for about $20-50. Hope this helps.


Edit: I just read you were getting the correct signal @the ECU, this may not fix your proble but its worth a try... Maybe the cluster is bad?.?.?

 

Well I got it, took me long enough. Ended up having some type of ground from my BLU/WHT signal wire in the engine bay. I just cut the wires to it and ran my own 12v, Gound, and Signal. Car is running fine WITH a Speedo and VTEC of course. Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

 

i used to have a big problem with a perfectly working fine VSS....

it didn't look that dirty at the time, but i decided my last resort was to clean it real good...so this is what i did:

sprayed some Simple Green in there...let it soak up the plug for a good couple minutes....then spill it....fill it up again with degreaser...

then i started spraying some brake kleener cuz i was worried about leaving the connector sticky from the simple green. after spraying the brake kleen...i blew out both connectors with air to make sure there's nothing wet.

conntected it back up and worked fine....weird.