Nissan Repair: 98 Nissan Frontier Speedometer, backyard mechanic, wrecking yard parts

Question
1998 Nissan Frontier XE King Cab 2wd - 5 speed manual -- I am having speedometer showing I'm doing 40 mph regardless how fast or slow I am traveling. (speedometer does return to zero after coming to a stop)  A mechanic replaced the speed sensor with no success.  Now they are telling me the speedometer head needs to be replaced at a tune of $500. Would this be something that would be correct?  If so is this something the backyard mechanic could replace themself. Thank you.

Answer
Richard,

Yes, the mechanic did the correct thing since the speed sensor fails more than the speedometer.  You could do it yourself by getting one from the wrecking yard.  It is basically the task of taking the instruments out of one vehicle and putting them in your truck.  A word of warning that regardless of who does the work the new speedometer has to read the same as the old one or you could have a problem with the authorities.  Now, you probably have over 100K on the odometer and if that is the case and the truck is represented as such you should not have a problem since the prospective buyer would know that it was well over 200K miles.  So, it is easy to do it yourself with wrecking yard parts.