Speedometer cable

I hope an answer to your question comes about, I am getting sick of the noise too, although I can still hear the voices. ANd that damn groan on tight turns I have to grease those plastic caps everry week!

Searcher

I had a noisy speedo on a 1990 Hilux Surf (Jap 4Runner). I loosend the speedo cable at the transmission and pulled out the wire part which was dry and lightly coated it with grease and voila! no more noise. Took about 5 min to fix.

I had a similar problem with my 1989 pick-up SR5, 6-cyl, 2WD. Finally, when I reached the point that I couldn't stand anymore the noise, I removed the instrument panel and armed with a grease-gun, tipped with the syringe coupler, I injected grease into the tach cable and a little bit into the rotor of the tach. The noise vanished and today, after two years, has never come back. I hope it helps. Gene

But you have to grease the cable core when it first starts making noise, before the cable core is damaged from sticking and twisting in the outer cable casing, and then starts damaging the casing.

If the cable is worn enough to where the core has gotten stuck and kinked inside the casing, greasing the core will only help short term

- and when the inner cable totally breaks the frayed end often chews up the plastic lining of the cable casing.

If the cable broke, replace both the casing and core as a unit - or the screwed up old casing will wreck the new cable before it's time, whether you greased or not. (The grease buys you more time, but it's service life will still be far shorter.)

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I tried removing mine from the trans end but the inner cable would not budge at all. I loosened the dash and pulled the gauge cluster out maybe 4" so I could get the speedo cable off (it was cliped on vice screwed on). I then pulled off a small rubber washer and was able to inject some liquid graphite down along side the cable in the housing. It lasted about 5 years (a '90

4Runner) but now my daughter says it is making a racket again - worse than ever! It was indeed a royal pain getting the dash apart and the gauge cluster pulled out. There are nmny sharp metal edges under the dash that nip at your hands. It was a good 3 hour job. Don't think I'd use grease or oil --- liquid graphite is probably best. Note - I couldn't remove the inner cable from up top either. If a new cable and housing is in the $30 range - I'll probably replace the whole assembly this time.

Greasing it up only helped in the short term in both my Toy rigs. I finally had my mechanic replace the entire speedo head with a junkyard unit. Cost for the 84 Tercel was $90 (parts and labor). Cost for the 87 Corolla was $140 (parts and labor).

Of course your odometer reading will not be the same, but it my case it meant my 210K car now only had 170K and the 220K car only had 191K....

Its generally the cable that squeaks NOT the speed head unit.

Don't know much about the details, just know that my mechanic had lubed the speedo cables and it quieted down for awhile, then came back. He finally suggested the swapout.

Problem solved. When the same thing started on the corolla a year or two later, and the first lube effort went south, I had him swap out the whole assembly and problem solved....