# +/-1995 D21 Hardbody/Pathfinder Speedo and Tachometer repair (photos)



## cws (Feb 21, 2011)

I bought a '95 Hardbody XE-V6 4x4 5 speed about a year ago, it had a few issues but nothing overly concerning. One of the problems it had was a non working tach. I had at one point considered replacing the tach with a new oem since that seemed to be where the problem existed but I didn't want to shell out the $300 the dealer wanted. 
Further to my gauge problems, about 2 months ago the speedo started acting up aswell. This was the push that I needed for an overhaul on the guages. 

History: 
not unlike alot of you guys out there my speedo started acting up-in that sometimes it would work fine and other times it would work sporadically. It would often jump around and seemed very temperature sensitive. I began looking around for a solution to the problem. These forums and others had alot of people pointing to the Vehicle Speed Sensor (VSS) as the source of the problem. So I replaced the VSS. This didn't fix the problem just as alot of you guys experienced. 

I decided to call my local dealer to see what they wanted for a new speedo head, $500 (I live in Canada). Needless to say this was not the option for me, so I began searching. At first my luck wasn't looking good, I couldn't find a cheap oem online and i didn't want to buy a cheesy after market one. To the junkyard. 3 junkyards had no nissans that age. 1 was closed for the winter.... and one I had contacted before for some other parts and they said they had no nissans that age. I decided to call them again and apparently this time they had 2 '95 pathys. The gauge clusters were the same for both D21 and Pathfinder around that year. So one day over my lunch break I went up to the junk yard and found that they actually had about a dozen vehicles around the year I needed. Just my luck! So i ripped one out of a pathfinder and brought it home for $60 

This is how you replace the speedo-head and tach-head on a mid '90s truck or pathy. It's the best/cheapest/easiest way to do it, trust me. All you need is 1.5 hours, a philips head driver, a beer, tape and maybe the hand of a surgeon.

How to do it:
1)Find the donor cluster. Different years may work but if you can find your year just grab that one.
2) Pay the junkyard for the cluster (don't let the dog bite you and dont' pay more than $60)
3)Drive home happy, and get your things
4) Remove these 2 screws, put in a safe place.









5) Once those are out pull hard. There are a few metal friction clips holding it in place, pull hard they just pop out. You may need to do something with your e-brake lever depending on which model you have. I have a floor mounted lever so i didn't have to worry about it.









6)This will expose 2 new screws holding the cluster trim in place. remove these 4 screws, put in a safe place.









7)After the cluster trim is out it will reveal the 4 screws holding the cluster in place. remove these 4 screws, put them in a safe place. the cluster should be free now with the exception of 4 wiring harnesses connected into the back of it. Mark these before you remove them so you know where to put them back in, use electrical tape or something. Very important. 









8)Your cluster is out. This is my donor cluster.









9)To get to the speedo head and tach head remove the cover. There are tabs for the clear plastic cover and different ones for the black plastic cover. You don't need to remove the clear plastic cover, just the black ones. There's a bunch of them. Use a standard screw driver and a cloth.









10) Voila exposed front.









11) The back. Each head is head in place by 3 or 4 screws which when fastened tightly make contact with blue plastic circuit board thing. The signal is transferred through the circuit board to these screws which then power the heads accordingly. The 4 screws in the middle are the ones attached to the speedometer. Remove them and the speedo will pop right out. The 3 screws to the left are what attaches the tach. Remove them and it will fall right out.









12) the tach out.









13) I had one extra step in the process, my truck only had 174 000kms on it and my donor cluster had 246 000kms on it so I had to find a way to set it back. I won't go into to much detail on how to do this to avoid the information getting into the hands of the wrong person. I understand that this is an important step since most of the clusters you'll find in a junkyard will be different than yours. So if you're really stuck and need a hand with it PM me and I'll see what I can do.

14) Put it all back together, fire the truck up, go for a spin and watch 'er work.

15) finish beer.

I've been driving the truck for about 2 weeks now and It's all back to normal the fix seems to have worked out perfect. 
Don't waste the money on the VSS, it's likely not the problem. Try this first, it's a cleaner and easier job, and if the problem isn't solved then try the VSS. 

One question you might ask is "Do I need to switch out the heads or can i just switch my cluster with the one from the junkyard?" The answer is that yes you can just replace one cluster with the other. The only thing you have to be sure of is that you're replacement is an exact match. I did this at first and forgot that my donor was taken from an Automatic and my truck is a standard. This meant that I had a couple of lights lit up on the dash that didn't make sense for my model (A/T fluid temp light). Thats why i chose to replace the heads instead, you could also just remove the bulbs that light up the symbols, just make sure you know which ones you're removing and which ones to add. 

Hopefully this helps.

~CWS


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## burnt03 (Mar 22, 2005)

Thought I might as well bump this thread up with my related problem....

I was having problems with the tach on my '95 HB 4x4. It would rarely work properly, usually would either sit at 2K or 8K. Found this thread (excellent walkthrough by the way... usually when I take stuff apart I always miss and screw and end up breaking something) and thought I'd try it.

Found a donor '95 Pathfinder in the local pickandpull, only difference was that my tach didn't have the little clock in the cluster. So pulled the tach and clock out, installed into mine and still kind of having problems.

First off, clock doesn't work (forgot to grab the little brass spacers so it doesn't make a connection with the circuit board... but that's ok).

Secondly, tach won't work (just sits pegged at zero) until I'm about 5-10 minutes down the road, then it'll work perfectly. Shut the truck off for a few minutes, same deal.

Any ideas?


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## slartidbartfast (Dec 24, 2014)

*Alternative repair route*

Almost all Nissans of this era have the console gauges attached to the main circuit boar with screws that double as electrical contacts. The circuit boards are not strong enough however, so the slder joint whre te screws go into the speedo or tach get microscopic cracks and the gauge stops working intermittently - usually worse when it's humid.

If you retouch these solder joints, you will usually fix the problem.


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## smj999smj (Jan 1, 2006)

Actually, the threaded insert at the back of the speedometer head in which the screw goes into is place where they develop cracks. It was common on a lot of mid-90s Nissans. I worked with a Nissan service rep and a Japanese engineer to help figure out the problem. It was the 95 Sentras that first started showing a problem where it would intermittently trigger a P0500-Vehicle Speed Sensor code, sometimes accompanied by no or intermittent speedometer in-operation. We got a light blue, four-door in the shop that was somewhat regular in acting up. The Japanese engineer, who spoke no English, came in, pulled the cluster out of the dash with the wires still connected, and cut right through the entire harness! He did this so they could test the circuits to figure out what was going on without disturbing the harness connection at the back of the cluster. He then installed new dash harness connectors, which already had leads, and solder/shrink-wrapped every single wire, followed by installing a brand new, complete cluster assembly. They were eventually able to figure out what was going on, discovering the cracks in the threads. The "fix" was to replace the speedometer head unit. As some time passed, I started seeing the problem occur on Hardbodies and Pathfinders and occasionally a Maxima or Altima.


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## slartidbartfast (Dec 24, 2014)

smj999smj said:


> Actually, the threaded insert at the back of the speedometer head in which the screw goes into is place where they develop cracks. It was common on a lot of mid-90s Nissans.


That's what I was trying to say


> I worked with a Nissan service rep and a Japanese engineer to help figure out the problem. It was the 95 Sentras that first started showing a problem where it would intermittently trigger a P0500-Vehicle Speed Sensor code, sometimes accompanied by no or intermittent speedometer in-operation. We got a light blue, four-door in the shop that was somewhat regular in acting up. The Japanese engineer, who spoke no English, came in, pulled the cluster out of the dash with the wires still connected, and cut right through the entire harness! He did this so they could test the circuits to figure out what was going on without disturbing the harness connection at the back of the cluster. He then installed new dash harness connectors, which already had leads, and solder/shrink-wrapped every single wire, followed by installing a brand new, complete cluster assembly. They were eventually able to figure out what was going on, discovering the cracks in the threads. The "fix" was to replace the speedometer head unit. As some time passed, I started seeing the problem occur on Hardbodies and Pathfinders and occasionally a Maxima or Altima.


Interesting information - Thanks!


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## DrDread (Apr 11, 2016)

Now I know why I have to sometimes tap on top of my tachometer to get it to start showing RPM. This will be an easy fix since I've already had the instrument cluster out to replace all the lights with LEDs. Also, while I'm in there I'm going to wipe out the little piles of dust that have gotten in through the odometer reset and clock set holes. My 1994 pickup has 247K miles on it and still going strong. I bought it in 2000 with 42K miles. Thanks for this great post!


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## jp2code (Jun 2, 2011)

FYI:

For vehicles with instrument clusters like the ones shown here (simple electrical connector for the tach and speedometer), you do not really need to pull the cluster apart.

Rather, you can simply take the old cluster out and put the new cluster in.

That eliminates the problem of not getting the clock working correctly or having to fret over accidentally snapping off some of the old, plastic tabs when you try to take the cluster apart.


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