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Trip report speedo problems, and Seafoam


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As you can probably tell from the title, this may be a bit of a ramble. I took the Legacy on it's first real road trip (one just for recreation) over the weekend, and it performed very well (one tank went for 395miles before I fouind a place to fill up, then only took 14.1 gallons to fill). One annoyance (particularly when I was driving a lot of really twisty mountain roads) is that the speedo seemed to be reading a fairly constant 10MPH high. Is there a fix for this? Even with really bad struts, the car held the road like it was glued on, and when I blipped the accelerator, the car jumped forward like it was saying go ahead, I wanna run!!! I also found a lot of the roadsthat are used in making all those car and tire comercials that you see all over the place. They are all filmed on Rt 1 in Mendicino and Humboldt counties. When I returned home, I found that my supplier finally had some Seafoam in stock (I had been wanting to do this for a while) so I got a can and just ran it through the vacume line. While waiting for the car to warm up, I cleaned the headlights with the brake fluid/toothpaste method. I will know in the AM how well everything worked. the only real problem I'm having right now, after all that is the speedo reading so high. is there a way to adjust this? do I need new VSS modules (I have a manual tranny, is there one in there, or is it just the one in the dash/speedo cluster?) Are there any adjustments that I can do, or do I need to farm this one out?

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If the manuals have one, it would be in the gauge cluster, right behind the spedo dial.

I know that the autos have two: one in the tranny, and one in the guage cluster. I'm wondering if the manuals have one or two. either way, is there a way to adjust it? Or is this a case of a part needing to be replaced?

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My speedo is 5 mph fast no matter what speed I am going, I checked it with GPS and no matter if i was going 15 or 60 it always read 5 mph fast. I even changed tire size when I put new tires on it and it didn't change, I haven't really looked into why it is off, I have just been subtracting. One benefit I found is that when other people drive my car they are going slower than they think. At least I know i'm not the only one with the problem now.

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It would be less of a problem if I hadn't noticed the speedo jump with no corresponding change in velocity while I was driving down the freeway. . .

 

There is a guy I do work for that has a Legacy cluster that he will let me dig into to see if that helps. If it does, I'll post that here and you will know how to fix your Legacy. I do a fair bit of "outside the envelope" operations in this Legacy, and I need my instruments to be accurate because of it (sometimes I shave safety a bit close, if you know what I mean. . . . :brow: )

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i would say replace the speedometer cable....both MT's and AT's use the same one there are actually two parts to it...the cluster side and the transmission side

 

get both...youll have to pull your cluster hook up the new one and then hook the new on to your transmission....its mechanical not electrical....

 

I was having speedo lag...and noise...fixed my problem

 

Not to mention its pretty cheap $30 or so

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