pull-down or pull-up or nothing at all?

I agree with using OBD-II. Running things off a car's voltage supply is a lot harder than you'd think, there's voltage spikes and transients that you have to watch out for. Look up the recommended circuits for the, for instance, ELM327.

Another note, maybe the reason your speed sensor reads wacky volts is because it's not running off VCC, but a different voltage?