Nissan Repair: 95 Nissan Altima speedometer stops working, vehicle speed sensor, nissan altima


Question
I bought this car about ten days and then suddenly while I was driving to work I noticed that the speedometer stopped working, after a few minutes it started working again. I believe it could be some loose connection somewhere. I am not so familiar with cars, but I am confident that with some guidance I will be able to diagnose hte problem myself and fix it.

Answer
Abhijeet,

Check the vehicle speed sensor.  It is located on the transmission where the speedometer cable used to be inserted.  I would think it is starting to fail.  Altima cars do not generally have defective clusters and the vehicle speed sensor is the cheapest thing to start with.  If you really want to diagnose get volt/ohm meter and set it to read the square wave that comes from the vehicle speed sensor.  Now, remove the cluster and connect to the two wires that feed the cluster from the vehicle speed sensor and note the square wave generated.  If it is intermittent or you get no square wave, when driving, then the vehicle speed sensor is defective.  If you have signal then the connection or cluster is defective.