P2159: Vehicle Speed Sensor B Circuit Range/Performance
What to do
If this appeared after new tyres, a wheel change, or a space-saver spare being fitted, say so — different rolling radii make two working sensors disagree permanently, and no part will fix that. Otherwise the car usually drives normally and the cross-check is what has been lost.
What this code means
The second speed signal is present but does not agree with the others. This is the cross-check firing rather than a circuit fault, and the interesting question is which source is wrong.
One cause has nothing to do with any sensor. Incorrect tyre sizes change the calibration of anything that counts wheel rotations, so a vehicle fitted with tyres of the wrong rolling radius — or, more commonly, with mismatched sizes front to rear — produces a genuine and permanent disagreement between a wheel-derived speed and a transmission-derived one. Every sensor is working correctly and reporting exactly what it sees.
That is worth establishing before any part is bought, because it is free to check and it explains a fault that appeared immediately after new tyres were fitted.
Likely causes
Start here
- Mismatched or incorrectly sized tyres · easy
- Faulty vehicle speed sensor · moderate
- Faulty wheel speed sensor · moderate
Less common
- Damaged reluctor or tone ring · specialist
- Damaged wiring harness · moderate
Symptoms
Components involved
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
Community experience
Be the first to write this up
Nothing posted about this yet. Whatever you found is worth writing down — even a dead end saves someone the same afternoon.
What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
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