Yay, dead speedometer / CEL

[hfxdesign]

It just seems to be one thing after another when it comes to electronics. Off and on for the past several months my speedometer would quit working until I drove above about 40mph or pressed the trip reset button. Today it didn't want to work even after driving above 40mph and it threw a CEL (also felt like it was gonna stall when i started it up) P0500. So the symptoms other than the dead speedo were as follows: Car stalled on starting, only first time, second crank it fired up as normal. Speedometer would not work, and a fuel cut at around 4500rpm, though once I restarted the car the speedometer came back and no fuel cut, but the CEL persisted. My general assumption on this is the speed sensor itself is fine, the problem lies somewhere in the dash cluster (loose solder joint possibly?), considering the speedo comes back when I press / hold the trip reset button.

Is there any possibility this might be the ECU going bad?

[phi11]

this happens to me ALL THE TIME.

[thenines']

Has the speedo ever been replaced? Very common with 2nd leggys

[Muse]

I haven't tried the trip reset, but mine has a tendency to bounce around a lot until I get to about 30mph, at which point it settles down and acts normal. But half the time, it gets down to about 15-20, and will twitch once, when I'm decelerating.
I took a video of it:
http://youtu.be/el8zbHW_VRE

That anything like yours?

[hfxdesign]

UPDATE: Found the issue, the pin connectors on the speedo head were worn out (the board has 8 pins on it, OD1+/-, OD2+/-, SIN+/- COS+/-) That connect to a harness on the speedo head, over time those connectors lose their springiness and the connection fails. The fix was to place a screw against the harness and the housing to 'tilt' the board a little bit and get those connections working.

The fix is temporary at best, and I'd tighten down the connectors on the speedo head, but I honestly can't figure out how to disassemble it, or even if it can be disassembled.

[Wiscon_Mark]

It's probably best to replace the speedo & swap over the odometer.

At least it's not an ECU or speed sensor issue.

[hfxdesign]

I plan to when it finally dies outright. Got a junkyard right up the road from the house so I'm not desperate. It's been going good for the past 2 weeks, no CEL and car's running good. Though I'd think it should be running better than it does at 130k (Already replaced timing belt, water pump, MAF, plugs, wires, fuel filter, tranny fluid, vac lines, air filter, cv axles, brakes (and learned $20 brakes suck, will be upgrading soon enough), you name it....though at the same time I never did replace the Duty C solenoid in the transmission (16 AT OIL Flash, known about it for a long time, never did anything about it because I figured I'd be getting another subaru before the transfer hub broke)....That could explain it.