CRAZY odometer observations

[BunnMan]

Hey folks,

Would you believe 46mpg???

Me neither!! check this out...

I just bought a 96 Camry, you may have seen my few earlier posts. I was very anxious to figure out my mileage as that was a prime factor in the purchase of this car. I filled up shortly after tagging the car Monday and reset the trip OD. I had a road trip for work up into New York yesterday. I filled up in Ney York and excitedly grabbed my calculator to figure out how she was scoring...looked at the trip OD and read 743 miles! I'm thinkin, no way I got 743 miles out of a tank! The math said I got 46mpg, again...NO WAY! So once back on the road I'm scratching my head trying to figure out whats up. The GPS said it was 11.0 miles to my next exit, so I watch the OD and when it ticked 11 miles I still had 4.2 to go on the GPS. So obviously, the OD is around 40% fast. I checked the speedo against the GPS and it was only 3mph off at 65, no big deal there. I thought maybe the OD was incrementing in km but checked that this morning on the way to work and it's still too fast for km. The speedo and the OD must get their referrence from different sources. Any idea how to get this thing reading right? I gotta know the mileage!

Incidentally, this kind of works out to my advantage in a way. I bought the car at a great deal with 143K, judging from the OD inaccuracy it may only have about 100K on it depending on when the false registering started. Not good for resale obviously but I plan on runnin her till she dies anyway...so bonus for me I guess!

Thanks,

-BunnMan

[chronoti]

i hear stories of this happing they get the signal from the same source but the needle and od are ran off 2 different motors, i have a km gauge here and going to be pulling out the mile unit from my car in the next few days, going to see what the difference is between the 2 (i believe it's a capacitor on the board) that makes the od spin differently

[Mister_Perkins]

either that or you got a hybrid LOL

[DarkSideMoon]

According to some rough calculations it seems as though the ODO is displaying KM instead of miles. Converted straight from Kilometers it looks like 460 miles, does that sound about right? If it is there are a couple other threads with similar issues, I don't know if anyone has really fixed it.

[BunnMan]

Its incrementing even faster than if it were km

[chronoti]

ok i pulled the other speedo, everything the same BUT one extra jumper/resistor on the back of the pcb other than that all the same values for resistors and capacitors, both from a gen 3.5 (i'm rather sure the other was a 96 too). i'm drunk now tomorrow i'll try and take a picture of it. the gauge face is the same position for both the km and miles one so that wount change

http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/sh...21#post3590121

[iovaykind]

It's definitely reading km instead of miles. 11miles + 4.2 left = 15.2 which is 9.12miles, so its km.

So I have an extra gauge lying around.. hoping that it has the correct resistor/capacitor, should I try removing it and placing it onto my gauge to see if this is a fix?

[Mister_Perkins]

My gauge on the 95 is faster by 2 mph but I think it's due to me changing the gauge faces with the reverse glow

And removing them needles

[BunnMan]

I did the math this morning on the way into work spanning 15.3 miles using a GPS as an odometer, the Camry odometer is reading 61.2% fast. It indicated exactly 25.0 when I pulled up at the office.

If it has flipped itself into reading km instead if statute miles, that would reduce it to a 1.6% error on the fast side, as that should be 24.6 km. OK Chronoti...sober up and snap some photos of what the differences are in those two clusters...I think we're onto something

Incidentally, I called my local Toyota dealer yesterday and they claim to have never heard of this issue. Seems Toyota doesn't have a general tech line like some other motor companies do (cough, Ford, cough). They did offer their diagnostic services at $170 to figure out the problem so they could then charge me more to fix it. I joked with the guy over that pitch. I told him I was dissappointed, I bought a Toyota because they are legendary for racking up lots of miles. Now I'm not sure they really rack up lots of miles...I just think they're set to accelerate the recording of them...hahaha.

I did buy another cluster from an online junkyard for $40 shipped, so if I gotta replace it...I gotta plan. I'd much rather find the failed components in this one per Chronoti's efforts comparing the metric/imperial clusters. Awesome that he's willing to go through the trouble and that he's got the two parts to look at.

-BunnMan