VSS wiring problem

Hi there,

Got a problem with my VSS wiring. As the story goes, my speedo started behaving erratically about two months ago and inevitably stopped working, and would, after a while driving, throw CEL/EML code 17 for VSS as predicted.

I replaced the sensor and nothing doing, but I noticed the mph converter had been wired in awfully, so I trimmed back the loom, and carefully soldered the VSS plug directly to the loom without the mph converter, as another thought is I may have overheated the converter whilst heat shrinking.

This again, gave me no joy, so ordered yet another sensor, which I fitted today, to no success. I can now only assume, their is a break in the wire, within the loom wrap somewhere

So basically my solution comes to this - and I want input to see whether this is a viable solution?

I plan to solder a wire to ignition position 2 (with a 7.5a fuse as the vss and alternator share a 7.5 in the fusebox) which shall act as power directly to the VSS. I then plan to solder another wire as the signal wire, from the VSS to the ecu plug and then earth the VSS either to the chassis, or to the earth in the loom. My question is, will this work??

Any advice is welcome!

technically yes it will as you are basically just bypassing the loom,

But it would be much easier to get your hands on a multi meter and check the continuity from the pins on the plug to the ecu plug. It will pinpoint which wire is casuing the issue. Its rare a wire breaks in a loom, i think you're problem still lies at the converter! Start again with the multimeter! You'll quickly narrow the problem down!

Aye that's my first point of call, however - using a multimeter on the signal wire could be quite difficult? Unless I spin the gear on the vss at speed whilst its plugged in? And I assume it would need a power supply and earth to do so?

Ya but you have ruled out the vss itself by changing it, what you want to do now is to check the actual continuity of the wire itself to ensure that the kph to mph converter connection isn't the issue.

With the engine running you should have a 12v, a ground and a wire with neither, if that wire hasn't continuity from the vss plug to the ecu pin it's a good chance the concert connection is your bother!

So ive narrowed it down to the power cable, strange as you'd think other sensors would run from the same cable, guess I now just need to take a power supply from another sensor, or the ignition barrel.

OK, so checked all the wires with a multimeter, they seem all fine, but through three speed sensors, I still have no speedo. The power is getting 12v, the earth is doing its job fine, other than the signal wire which is sending a constant 4.5v back to the ecu plug whether spinning or not. I'm not sure whether this is normal or not, but the signal doesn't seem to change (tried spinning the sensor on the the end of a drill whilst plugged in. And out of three speed sensors, there is no difference to this. I'm wondering which direction to head in now? Do I have three dud speed sensors? Or is it my ecu? Any input would be ideal.

What car is it you have? Also is your car in mph or km?

Its an ek9 in kmh, though previously converted to mph, ive removed the converter though.

Aww ok i had a similar issue with my old eg6 sir but removing the converter fixed the problem it was water damaged and shat itself