early e30 swap; where to get vehicle speed signal for VANOS?

[E36M3LX]

hey guys, ive completed my first e30 swap, but cant find any good information on where to find the vehicle speed signal(VSS) on an early e30. the car is an 86 325es with an obd1 m52.

the best info i have so far is that i can get the signal from the green plug on the back of the cluster for the speedometer. but when i get to this plug, it has only one wire going to it which i think is the output from the diff for VSS. next to the one single wire thats going into the green plug are a bunch of empty pins, can i use any of these for VSS for vanos? or do i just splice into the one wire that's going into the green plug?

thanks for any help, i am a total wiring noob.

[netcsk]

You can use the empty pins adjacent to the one that already has something plugged into it.
The current one is for your cruise control, not from the differential.

[E36M3LX]

You can use the empty pins adjacent to the one that already has something plugged into it.
The current one is for your cruise control, not from the differential.

wow awesome. thank you! i will get pictures today and try to update this thread. i could not find a clear answer on this at all. so any of the pins adjacent to the one wire are outputs for vehicle speed signal?

[netcsk]

Yep. Should be 3 directly in a line that are all the same connector and single pin.
If you were to put a multimeter between them, they would have continuity.

[nando]

be careful, not all the pins on the green connector are for VSS. some of them are actually 12v. definitely check visually and also with a DMM.

[E36M3LX]

be careful, not all the pins on the green connector are for VSS. some of them are actually 12v. definitely check visually and also with a DMM.

i have a digital multi-meter. how should i go about checking? im assuming i can use any pin thats not 12v? do i check with the car running?

[M3PO]

All three of those pins have continuity with each other so I think they all do the same thing. I soldered a wire directly to one of the exposed pins.

[e30rapidic]

any of the three along the right side

[smooth]

When I did my swap I didn't do anything from the back of the cluster. I made a harness adapter from the c101 plug. Did I miss a step or can the VSS be pulled from the plug? How would I know it wasn't working? Mines an m50 vanos but now I'm wondering if I skipped a step on accident!

[328ijunkie]

later cars had it at c101