With apologies if I have overlooked this here already.

A brief history. I own a 98 Neon 4 door, 2.0 SOHC, which, when I bought it, had a dead instrument cluster. The dealer replaced it with a used one, and for the first couple of years, it worked great, then the infamous dead gauges problem arose. The speedo was working fine at this time, btw. Doing a bit of research revealed that the most common cause for this malady was poor solder points on the main connectors to the PCB from the harness, so I removed the unit, and sure enough, they looked as if they had been done by a blind one armed monkey on drugs. Whipped out my handy soldering pencil, and took care of this in short order. Problem solved. Or so I thought.

A couple of months back, I noticed that the speedo was registering while sitting still at traffic lights, and worse, registering highly erratic speeds when driving. I know full well this car will NOT go from 0 to 90 in under 1 second type of readings. So, I pulled the cluster out once more, rechecked my work, touched up a couple of other solder points that looked iffy, cleaned the connectors, and put it back in. For a couple of weeks, it worked great, and now? Well, the erratic readings are back with a vengeance, and worse, they seem to be affecting the transmission's shift pattern. I can be pulling out from a light, the speedo will jump to over 60, and at a staggering 15 MPH, the confounded beast will shift into high gear. Needless to say, this is NOT good for either the transmission, or the engine...

Got another cluster over the weekend from a low miler that had been wrecked, and after looking it over, and touching up the bad solder points, installed it. Gauges work great, but, the speedo is doing the same thing, as is the transmission. Logic tells me that the problem is probably not in the cluster. Researching this lead me to the VSS, and my question is now, would this be the most likely culprit? When the speedo is behaving, the vehicle runs great, no low speed upshifts and lugging engine, no overheating, no problems whatsoever. Since this is my wife's car, and she drives it almost daily in Charlotte, NC, I have concerns not only about the well being of the car, but for her safety when pulling out into traffic, as the beast nearly cuts out when it upshifts this soon. Pulling the shifter down to second at least stops this, but... there has to be a fix. This has been a great little car other than this, and I'd hate to either have to get rid of it, or sink a small fortune into repairs that could be prevented with a relatively simple part replacement.

Much appreciation,

~G

 

Does the odometer register as well when the speedometer is going crazy? You could pull the VSS clean it up and reseat it to make sure it has a good clean connection.

 

Being honest, I didn't really notice anything with the odometer, it may well have been flaking out as well. Replaced the VSS earlier, had a hairline crack in the housing, and now the problem appears to have been remedied. Since the cluster had been repaired and replaced twice, and the transmission exhibited no symptoms when the speedo was acting properly, that more or less leads me to think that the VSS had to be the problem. Finding the crack in the original unit, and seeing the problem fixed gives me hope that my logic hasn't failed me like most of my old carcass and my feeble mind...

Thanks much for the reply, much appreciated.

 

Sounds like you fixed the problem. Good for you!