How do i fix my speedometer when it stops working in my 1995 dodge neon?

Answer 1

Apparently this is a fairly common problem with Neons. The speedometer is controlled electronically, so there is no mechanical cable. What a number of people have found is that the connection between the plug pin and the circuit board in the instrument cluster breaks down. One test to see if this is the problem is to press on the right hand side of the instrument cluster sometime when the speedometer is not working. If it works while you are pressing on the cluster, there's probably a connection problem at that point.

The solution: remove the top cover of the dash board (snap fit -- just pry it up) then remove the instrument cluster.

You'll have to take out 4 screws and the lower right is hard to get to.

The screws to remove are the phillips screws in the white tabs, top and bottom left and right; After that, however, slide the instrument cluster slightly toward the steering wheel to unplug it, and just lift it out. The four torx screws can easily be removed in your shop after you have taken the panel out.

If you try to remove the torx screws first you will drop the tool and have to remove all the lower panels to retrieve it. I wasted 3 hours doing that, before using the four philips screws, which took about 5 minutes.

There are two groups of connectors, one on the right the other on the left. The speedometer connection is one of those on the right. Take off the back of the instrument cluster and remove the circuit board (gently so you don't crack or break it).

Unplug the multi-connection ribbon. On the back side of the pins for those groups of connections, a small portion of the pin protrudes and is surrounded by a little bit of solder. What many have found to be successful is touching a hot soldering iron to those short pin extensions until the existing solder changes color all the way to the circuit board. (The change in color indicates it has melted.) Do not add any more solder, just reset the existing solder.

Which pin? Do all 20. If the pin for the speedometer is faulty, the others are probably not far behind.

Reassemble the instrument panel, plug it back in, and screw it home. The only difficulty in snapping the dashboard cover back in is getting the alignment pins toward the front of the cover to go into their holes. Sometimes the anti-rattle cushion on the front edge of the cover comes out of place and needs to be resecured.