I have a 1999 subaru legacy wagon brighton edition. The probelm is the speedometer only works when it wants to, going on and off at will with no real pattern to its madness. The only thing that seems to work occasionally is to press the trip odometer reset a few times and sometimes the speedometer will start working again.
In attempting to fix the problem we have replaced the sending unit (attached to the transmission and sends the signal to the dash unit), that did not work. We then replaced the entire gauge cluster including the speedometer, this did not work. We checked the continuity of the wire running from the sending unit to the speedometer and it was fine, obviously the speedometer still didnt work...
Has anyone else had this problem or maybe just have any idea as to what the problem could be?

 

My Subaru is a 1999 Legacy Outback Limited wagon. The speedometer stopped working in February when I suddenly smelled something burning, heard a pop and then the gauge went dead..... oddly though it sporadically works like normal and then stops -- it is quite erratic. I was never able to pinpoint the burning smell -- what I presumed was that with the heavy snow/ice this winter (a few snowfalls were quite deep) that my boyfriend had driven the car through an ice block in the driveway and had torn off/loosened the cable from the transmission somewhere underneath. Any thoughts/suggestions would be greatly appreciated because this is quite the nuisance when driving, and makes it difficult to know when to service.....