What would happen if I bypassed the speed sensor with the speedometer cable and went directly from the tranny into the cruise control module? My speedometer has been broken and I found that the cable coming from the tranny to the vss was badly frayed. When I tried to remove the cable from the speed sensor, I broke the vss. Therefore, I now need a new speed sensor and a new speedo cable. But, can i just bypass the vss and go right to the cruise control module with the new speedo cable?

 

With no VSS, your overdrive will never engage.

Your speedo cable goes into your cruise control module?

Mine goes into my dash cluster through the firewall.

 

Yeah, the speedo cable comes from the tranny into the vss, out of the vss into the top of the cruise control module, out of the bottom of the cruise control module into the speedometer.

 

Correction, I just asked the guy at the autoparts store and he said that it is not the cruise control but its called a transducer. He had no idea what its purpose was.

 

If "wiper boy" has no idea as to it's purpose, then how can he claim it's not part of the cruise control?

A transducer is a device that converts mechanical energy into electrical signal, or in this case...electrical pulses. The rotation of the speedometer cable is converted into electrical pulses by the transducer and (pay attention here) those pulses are sent to the cruise control module in order to regulate the speed of the vehicle.

 

thank you alloro

 

This transducer in effect does the same thing as the VSS. Perhaps overdrive will work with the VSS bypassed.

What year is your van again?

 

My van is a 1988 B150.

 

I would not try to bypass the VSS. I have been having to manually flick my VSS for a couple months now for it to work and overdrive to engage. Tonight I had to do it at a redlight, because 60 mph in third gear is annoyingly loud and wasteful. It decided to stop working after 15 miles of driving, a new occurence. It will be a 43 dollars output soon.

Your outer cables are probably still fine, you should be able to get any length of inside cable to slide within and couple with the VSS tranny and cruise control transducer.

I was just looking at www.rockauto.com They list your cables.
They are in the BODY/Interior sub category. Not really expensive.
They also list a new VSS, for about 30% more than what Autozone sells it for.