Help! Odometer issue!

[RangerFella]

Okay so I installed this aftermarket tachometer. I piggybacked off the tach wire behind the gauge cluster using the supplied wire splice tool. This required me to remove gauges and get at the wiring harness.

I didn't inadvertently cut any wires or anything like that. No tools went anywhere near the gauges or the wiring harness. I used a can of "dust remover" (compressed air, relatively low pressure) for electronics to spray the bits and pieces of stuff that had accumulated behind the plastic, out.

The problem: Neither the odometer nor the trip-meter work now. The speedometer works, and everything else works...just not that.

Is there a fuse somewhere that could be replaced or...? I really have no idea what in world could have happened.

I don't know if it could be the cause but I also recently had a pretty severe tire blow out on the back driver's side. I know that's where the wires and whatnot for the speedo and odo are.... Is it possible a piece of the tire knocked loose a wire of some kind? I don't really know if it stopped working after the tire thing or the tachometer installation.

My only thing is: If the speedo works, why doesn't the odometer? It's reading the same signal, right?


Thanks

 

[Hazmat Ranger]

The odometer and trip meters have a small motor with a worm gear on it that turns the digits. My gear broke and I had to replace mine. I recently picked up an Explorer gauge cluster from the scrap yard and it had the gear I needed. You will have to pull the gauges out again, pull out the Speedo and look for a black gear "inside" the clear plastic of the gauge, the motor assembly twists inside a "socket" in the housing of the gauge and then you can lift it out and unplug it.

Worth a shot, but not the definitive cause . . .

 

[RangerFella]

So it's either the motor or a gear that's busted in there, correct? That's what I was thinking, since that's the only way one would work without the other, the speedo/odo I mean.

 

[Hazmat Ranger]

Yeah it could be either one, I don't know of a way to check the motor without damaging it by applying current to it.