A burned cable is not going to make it read 20 MPH faster. It would have to magically spin the cable faster to do that. I would replace it anyway since it will likely fail soon. I've burned 2 or 3 over the years. The last cable I got must be longer since I was able to route it far away from the exhaust and haven't had any problems in a while.
But first you do need to figure out what the rear gear ratio is and then what tranny you have, specifically what speedo drive gear is in the tranny. Check the rear gear like was stated above, and then see what gear is in the tranny, and then we should be able to find you the closest speedo cable gear. If you can't see in the speedo gear opening, you can try looking for the tranny tag info (most likely long gone if it was rebuilt) or like speedy said, count the input shaft vs drive shaft rotations to attempt to identify the tranny, but that won't tell you for sure what speedo drive gear is on the output shaft.
I have 3.73 gears with a 7 tooth drive gear in the tranny, and my speedo is still about 4 mph fast at 60, but that is a lot better than being 20 MPH fast.
Do the checks and get back to us and we can get it stratght for you.