It's your speedometer assembly that needs replacing.  About $200 new
from Nissan.  Just did the one in my '95 last summer.

Wil

'94 and '95 Pathfinder use a known defective chip in the speedometer
head.  You can try replacing the gear in the sensor but I doubt that's
the problem. Gears are not usually intermittant.  You can remove the
old one and look at it to be certain.

Regarding the defective chip - you can't buy it because it is custom
for Nissan and they don't sell it.  That means you need a whole new
head.  You can buy one at a junk yard, but it might be bad also.

In my case, I designed a replacement circuit for the defective chip.
However, I don't recommend this route unless you really know your
electronics.  It requires cutting traces, adding components and
recalibrating against a frequency generator.

This problem really sucks because it affects your odometer, trip
odometer, speedometer and cruise control.  In addition, as it gets
worse, it will cause your check engine light to come on with the code
telling you the speed sensor is bad.

You might find that this problem only occurs when the defective IC is
cold.  If you bought this vehicle last summer and only seen the
problem recently, it may be that the prior owner knew about it.

For additional information, go to Google Groups and search for AN8363.

Marko

That sure smells like a sticky speedo cable. My '87 PF had a speedo cable.
Dunno about the later ones, but the speedo asy was really easy to get out --
a half dozen screws and a little jiggleing and out it came.  Check for a speedo
cable, and it hast one, pull the center part out and lube it.