Odometer and Trip Not Working

[kwyjibo]

I have a G3 '96 Camry LE 4-cyl that is running great and just turned 140,000 miles yesterday! I normally get between 27 and 30 mpg. However, my last tank of gas, I got nearly 39 mpg! I initially thought that maybe my Camry is really liking the cold air this time of year, but upon further review on this tank, I noticed that my odometers (normal and trip) were turning faster than they should, to the tune of approximately 1.5 miles for every 1 mile! The problem seems to be nothing related to the fuel mileage, but the odometers themselves.

My speedometer needle seems to be working just fine. My tire pressures are fine.

Has anyone ever had this problem or can anyone suggest what needs to be done? I talked to the service dept at my local dealership and he had never heard of this problem. He did tell me that up to the '96 G3 models, the parts are mechanical. From '97 G4 and on, they are digital.

Help?!?!?!? before I rack up more totally unnecessary miles.

Thanks for all who reply.

[Digger1]

Could they have somehow jumped to the kilometer (metric) mode?

1.5 sounds suspiciously close to the 1.6 conversion factor between miles and kilometers.

[kwyjibo]

Is that even possible??? I have no idea, but it sounds very close to what I am experiencing.

How would I even check for that?

[Digger1]

Sorry, you've just reached the limits of my knowledge on this subject!

[Cyorke]

the Gen 3 doesnt have digital Odometer. Or at least I have never seen one that did. It is wierd that the odometer is giving you problems and not the speedometer be cause they both run off of the speedometer cable that comes into the back of the guage cluster. If you said the speedometer was acting up it would be a pretty simple, replace the speedo cable. It sounds more like the speedo head itself is going out or has already gone out. I am not sure how to test it though since it is all gear driven. There are no electrical test you can do. I never saw this problem when I was working fo Toyota so I cant be of much more service. I am pretty sure there are some other Toyota Techs that frequent the board though amybe they can be of more assistance. If not I would say it may be time to call your dealer or maybe a shop in your area that specializes in Toyota repairs.

[kwyjibo]

Thanks for the input... I've talked to 2 local dealerships today, neither had ever heard of the problem. Although one said that it may be a sensor on the outside of the transmission or a stripped gear wheel (?) inside the transmission that is specifically for the speedometer/odometers.

This is an interesting problem...!

[rat42]

my guess ... replace the speedo head with a salvage unit (don't forget to keep track of both odometer readings). then open up the bad one and find the gear that got moved so it is recording klicks instead of miles. i bet 3.8 cents the innards are the same for kph and mph speedometers.

[4EVERCooL]

First. How do you know, your odometer runs 1.5 miles when you actually ran one? Did you measure that somehow? Second. Have you installed tires of a greater size recently? Bigger radius of wheels, than it is prescribed by manufacturer will cause your speed and mileage to be measured improperly.

[kwyjibo]

More like 1.6 miles. I've been measuring and keeping track for the past week.

For instance, my drive to work is 9.2 miles. But my trip and odometer are recording 14.7 miles all of a sudden. This JUST started about 3 weeks ago when I recorded nearly 550 miles on a tank of fuel and the low fuel light had not even come on yet. The last tire change was 2.5 years ago and they are the correct size.

If you do the math, is it a coincidence that 9.2 miles = 14.7 kilometers? Pretty weird to me!

I am at a loss and so are a couple of dealerships that I've talked to. I'm hesitant to bring it in and have them charge me for spending alot of time trying to figure it out.

[4EVERCooL]

Whats your consumption in liters for the time when you were observing these weird things. Could you make calculation of how many liters you have eaten for 100 km, if we suppose your odometer switched to km measuring (which is a mistique thing anyway ). Tell me the digit and I will tell you if it is at all possible .

Revised - Calculated myself . I am Russian, so liters/100 km is a more understandable figure for me. Mpg stands for miles per gallon, right? So what we have in your case is - 1 mile - 1,6 km, 1 gallon - 3,8 liters. Proportional calculation gives the result of 8 liters per 100 km before you've had the problem. This is a fair and good result for your 4-cyl engine (I wish I had the same on my V6 ). After you got weird things going on (39 mpg) - the calculation shows that you had 6 liters!!!! per 100 km, which is totally impossible, as in winter there is no way to make the consumption 2 liters lower - it goes higher by all means.

[kwyjibo]

My trip and odometer calculated:

565 miles (909 km) on 14.5 (54.9 ltrs) gallons = 39 mpg (16.5 kpl)

I normally get about 29 mpg (12.3 kpl). It is STILL calculating this way and no one knows what the problem is.

Yes, 39 mpg = 6 liters/100 km. Which proves there is something weird going on.

Is there a sensor on the outside of the transmission that could have gone bad?

<throwing darts blind>

[luiscolorado]

Hello, everybody. I have a Camry '96 with about 160K miles, and I have exactly the same problem. Forget about the mileage... that's not the problem here.

I used the trip milestones on the road, and I would say that for 10 miles, my odometer reads a bit more than 15.3 miles. I also kept a constant speed, and kept track of the time, and I could verify that the speedometer gave an accurate speed.

This is pretty puzzling. I also had the impresion that, somehow, the odometer might be in 'metric' mode.

Any ideas about how to fix it?

Thanks a bunch!

Luis

[kwyjibo]

I just had my dash instrument cluster serviced by an independent speedometer service guy (Bill's Speedometer in O'Fallon, MO).

There was a blown resistor on the circuit board. The odometer will automatically default to METRIC when this board goes bad.

He also replaced my "D" shift indicator light which had gone out and an illumination bulb for the shift indicator tree, which were pretty tough to get to in the cluster, apparently.

Save yourself about half the cost of repair by taking out the cluster yourself. It was WAAAAAY easier than I expected. There were 2 screws above the instruments and two on either side of the radio in my '96 Camry. This enabled the entire dash panel to pop out. There were also screws holding in the instrument cluster once we took the dash panel off. Took about 5 minutes and just unplugged the single unit cluster from the sets of cables connected in the back. Very easy!

He charged me $150 for repair. Would have cost $300-$400 if I had one of his guys come out and take the cluster out for me.