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'88 Upper Speedo Cable Quest

Saudade

NAXJA Member
NAXJA Member
Location
SoCal
Been trying to remedy a jumpy and noisy speedo on my '88. Pulled the cluster out and cleaned out the speedo as well as washed out the stubby speedo cable (cruise control). The outer jacket is rock hard and inflexible. Plus the plastic conector that slips over the speedo is cracked.

The parts manual shows different part numbers for 87-early 89, vs late 89-90. The 90's seem plentiful.

I'd rather not bypass the cruise sensor and get the long cable (also plentiful).

Has anybody tried the '90s upper cable on their earlier XJ? Or better yet know of a source for the correct upper?

Early Renix XJs are very scarce here in SoCal so JY's are not a current option.

Thanks in Advance!!
 
Used only and probably just as bad as the one you've got.

If this helps, please know that at the dealership we replaced tons of those cables and couldn't get rid of the needle bounce.
 
Thanks. The needle bounce is not too bad and happens around 40-50mph and then only a few mph. When I had it all apart, I pulled the core cable out and used my drill to run the speedo. It ran smoothly. Guess I need to pull the lower cable too, clean and lube and perhaps the trans side gear too.

While I cleaned out the speedo gears (odometer, trip) I must have gotten some lube inside the little disk thingy. It made my speedo read way too high. When my gps said said 45, the speedo pegged. Had to pull it apart again and sprayed some contact cleaner in the thingy to wash it out. Was carefull about regreasing the plastic gears. It reads correctly now.
 
Well the struggle is real.

Had to go back in again as the bounce came back with a vengence but only when cold. Once the heat came up, either solar through the windshield or by running heat through the dash vents, it would calm down but still bounce.

So out it all came once more. This time I took toothpicks to pick out any remaining grease in the gears. I even took the CC sensor apart and cleaned it out too. Then run with my drill to see how it worked. I kept hearing a slight clicking and the needle would bounce to the beat. So more picking, cleaning, wiping. Ran a 14 guage wire down the short cable casing while flushing it out. I repeated until I heard no more clicking and the needle moved smoothly. Sadly, my punk drill would only spin to about 35 mph.

So back together we go. I used the WAZE app to show me GPS speeds to help calibrate my speedo. It's right on. Made several local trips yesterday and kept checking speed against the GPS. So far so good.

One benefit though, I'm getting pretty fast at removing the panel.
 
I had the same issue back in 2017. Looks like the pics from that post are gone (thanks Photobucket!). Here they are 3 years later but still the same.

eiW65j9.jpg


FoP4dCq.jpg
 
Just a quick update. Been a few days and my speedo is fixed. The needle swings smoothly, it's steady and reads right on my GPS speed.

As you can see from the pic above, there's a bit of grease along the blue shaft. I carefully cleaned all of that out.
 
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