Hi everyone...I have just bought my first Volvo...an '89 240DL Wagon!After careful consideration and advice from all the members on this forum I took the plunge..so to say.The car is really very good and the more I drive it the more it grows on me.
Only one problem.....the speedometer works but not all the time...it will be working then it will just stop and the needle crashes to zero and then other times it will not be working then it starts to work again....sometimes a bump in the road will get it started so I am not getting an accurate reading of odometer and speedometer..Is it the speedometer cable??Is it an easy fix???

 

89 is electornic. There are three connections on the back of the speedo two come from the speed sensor on the rear axle and the red/black supplies 12v . It sounds like you have a bad connection on the speed sensor wires. If you do not have 12v there car will not run.

 

Thanks for the info...I was able to go to the junkyard and find an '89 240 and I took the instrument cluster...I also checked the resistance of the Blue and the Blk wires of the three pin connector that plugs into the speedo...the reading was 2.869k ohms...when I got home I removed original instrument cluster and checked the resistance of the 2 wires on my car..the readings were nearly the same....thus telling me that if I indeed had a short it was not coming from the speed sensor or its connections...but from the speedo itself....I swapped the instrument cluster with the one from the boneyard and sure enough I solved the problem and everything is FIXED!!I spent $28 for a socket tool to remove the steering wheel nut(27mm deep socket)and $20 for the instrument cluster.So I am pretty happy with the results.So maybe this info will be of use to others as well. BNE