Hi all..

The speedo in my 940 spent some time being erratic, went through a phase of registering 80kph no matter the speed of the car and has now stopped working entirely. After a recommended mechanic basically just scratched his head I thought to take it to the local Volvo dealership/service centre (yeah, I've only had a volvo for about a year lol)

Anyways, after shelling out 3 days pay today for some diagnostics, this is the response:

"Speedometer not working.
removed cluster and inspected
found circuit to spee sensor had continuity and power and earth to speedo head
suspect internal fault in speedo head

And a quote for $1224 (plus labour) for a part (3523649)

So a couple of questions..

1) Having read a few other threads..should I be asking whether they checked the solder on the circuit board

2) Is that part just the speedo or is it the whole instrument cluster that needs to be replaced (sorry if that's a dumb question, I dont know cars lol)

3) If I found a listing on ebay for "volvo instrument cluster/speedo assembly fits 960 s90 v90" Would this fit my 940??? (It does look exactly the same in pics, but my luck they're different.. :/ )

 

960 dash is different than 940

the speedo modules are quite year specific. switching instrument panels between years can be done however, your gas gauge might be wrong, requiring swapping the gas tank level sender.

91/92 used a really crappy speedo, I'm having problems with mine, too. I found crusty caps on mine and replaced all of them with high quality caps and now its WORSE, arrrgh.

 

Thanks Pierce..I was afraid of that!

Mechanics are on the hunt for a second hand speedo/cluster (whatever it is they need haha) but I'm a bit worried that either they will get it in and discover it doesn't work either, or I'll get 3 months out of it and then it will go the same way.

But I'm also struggling with the idea of spending more for this ONE repair than I did for the whole car a year ago lol.

(And of course, she won't pass rego next month if I don't do SOMETHING )

 

best bet is a good speedo shop that specializes in electronic speedos.

 

Thanks Lev..how do I find one of those? I imagine they're not listed in the phone book as "speedo shop" ?

 

google for speedometer repair cityname ?

 

It is probably bad capacitors in the speedo itself. Those are really cheap, and if you know how to solder, you can fix it yourself. Otherwise, your best bet would be to take it to a tv repair shop, or an electronics repair shop. $1000 is entirely too much to have that repair done. Any competent electrician who specializes in circuit board repair should be able to fix it.

Volvo 700/900 Speedometer Repair


I recently took the speedometer out of my 1992 740 wagon. One of the capacitors had gushed open, causing a short. It burnt a resistor (hopefully nothing else) and some of the traces. I replaces all of the capacitors and attempted to fix the burnt traces. I'm not sure if my work fixed the issue yet. I think the alternator in my car is fried, so I'll have to replace that before I can take it for a test spin.

 

and I said above, my 92 740 also had oozing caps and crust on the PCBA. Cleaned up all the crust, replaced *all* the caps with good ones bought from Digikey.com, carefully soldered with a proper temperature controlled soldering station and the right sized/temp tip for that grade of PCBA, and now it stops at 45mph and won't read higher except maybe once in awhile.

ARRRGH. I need to take it all back apart and resolder the whole board, and hope that sorts it out. For now, I'm using my Garmin as my speedo, lame.

 

Yeah, I'm really hoping the capacitors will fix it. I hope whenever the circuit burnt, that it didn't take out the one microchip with it. If not, I'll probably be using the GPS trick too!

 

get ALL the leakage crust off the PCBA, being really careful to get out any thats UNDER the chips. I used toothpicks and lotsa electrical board cleaner spray and I think I may have missed some

 

Most speedo shops are unable/unwilling to repair these high tech units.

My '91 740 speedo crapped out as did the wreck yard replacements that I got, so I finally bit the bullet and sent it off to a place in CA that is able and willing to fix these old units. It was, I think, $260 and they have an exchange program where they send one that's already fixed, for a deposit, and you send your old one in after you get the rebuilt. This involves pulling the cluster yourself, which is not that big a deal, as long as you disconnect the battery first. If you fail to do this you can (and probably will) blow the fuse which is built into the circuit board of the cluster. You can guess how I learned this...


There's also a place in Florida that fixes these. Can't find the invoice just now, but I did save the numbers in my phone:

310 838 7350. This guy is in CA, but he ships the same day.

An alternate shop in FL is also supposed to be good; their number is
888 495 2777. I went with the CA guy. The first speedo he sent me worked perfectly (odometer, too) for about 1000 miles, then it started doing the same bad tricks my old one had done. When I called him about it, he expressed a replacement to me the same day, which has worked fine for about 20,000 mi. now. I'm happy that I found a guy that stands behind his work w/ no BS. Give him a call. And don't forget what I said about disconnecting the battery. Otherwise, pulling the cluster is not that big a deal; seven plugs( and a hose if you've got a turbo) and a bunch of screws. Pretty straightforward..

 

note that on the vacuum hose for the turbo boost gauge, you do NOT pull the hose off the back of the instrument panel, instead feel down the hose into the rats nest deep in the dash, and there's a splice, THATS where it comes apart, leaving about 18" of hose attached to the instrument panel.

 

Hmm, those last few posts don't make much sense to me I'm afraid. And I definitely cannot solder. I was using a GPS as the speedo but where I live cars have to pass a road worthy inspection each year when you re-register, and a broken speedo is never going to pass. Florida & California is are kind of crazy far away from Australia.

At this point, she's been parked up in the backyard since October when the rego ran out, and I guess I will have to see if the wreckers want to come and pick her up

 

Junking a car just because of a bad speedo? Travesty!

 

You want to buy it for parts?

And it's not just the speedo. Before it could pass rego inspection it needs new seatbelt stalks (and possibly seat belts) there's an oil leak, hole in the muffler and a myriad of other things that I know would need to be done even before I got a mechanic to do a proper inspection and give me a list (which is almost guaranteed to be a long one)

We managed to source a secondhand speedo which we knew worked, and it didn't work in my car, so there is no point buying a new speedo at its prohibitive cost because that clearly isn't the problem. The mechanics at volvo have no idea what could be wrong and it will cost more than I paid for the car in the first place to keep investigating and trying whatever they can come up with in the hopes that someone comes across the problem.

I'm a single mum and can't afford to throw money after a dead car. What do you suggest I do with it??

 

well, I think I gathered you're in australia? you might see if there's any aussie volvo club in your part of the country, they might have a member who would be happy to take it off your hands to either restore or use for parts, maybe even give you something for it, I have no idea what the going value of those down there is.

the speedos on the 91/92 740/940's *are* known to be problematic, and they aren't compatible with either earlier or later years, you have to swap the whole instrument panel... and a later instrument panel has a different gas gauge dot dot dot...

 

Thanks Pierce. I am going to try to sell it privately first, but yes, country Australia, so there's not really any "local" club or anything. Hopefully I get lucky and there's a few random enthusiasts out this way.

My bad, when I said we tried a secondhand speedo, I did mean the whole instrument cluster - out of the correct model vehicle, that had been working in the car it was removed from. (At least the mechanics were nice enough to not charge me in the end - for the cluster OR the labour costs of trying it. I think they felt sorry for me lol.)

It's a shame because she's a good, sturdy, reliable car in most ways..it's just the problems she does have are too big for me.