Guage Swap Fun

[500 MJ]

Recently I took the old "Idiot Light" gauge out of my '88 MJ. You know the one with the speedo, a huge gas gauge and the rest are lights that turn on when things go awry.

 

I put in a full cluster from a '90 XJ and swapped over all the sending units that were incorrect from being hooked to the old cluster and got the new ones installed just fine.

 

Its working fine except for one problem. Somewhere along the line, between my old cluster and the new one, I lost my right front turn marker light (clear one under the headlight). The orange one on the side works fine and I know the bulb is good in the clear one because when I take the '90 cluster out, things work just fine. When the cluster is in however, it shorts it out or something. When I pull my parking lights on the turn signal indicator in the gauge lights up for the right side instead of the marker light turning on... I am about 90% sure the wiring to the back of the gauge is correct as it is setup like the harness that was in the XJ that the gauge came from. Is there some resistor or something else under the dash that I need to swap out to get my light working right again?

 

The Right turn signal works just fine, just the parking light is fubared...?

[Oizarod115]

if you figure this out lemme know, BOTH mine do this, and i never swapped gauges... with the lights on both turn signal indicators are lit up and then flash if i hit the blinker. :headpop:

[jaekl]

Almost guaranteed to be a bad groud at the parking/turn signal socket. The power back feeds across the double filament bulb and grounds thru the indictor lights. Been there, done that.

[500 MJ]

I'll keep you posted, Probably get to checking it out this weekend sometime... Thanks

[Joe Jeep]

I had this problem on my MJ. With the lights on, the left side turn signal would be on. If I used the turn signal, it would flash. If I used the hazards, the front turn signals would flash but not at the same time (like a cop car). It turned out to be a bad ground in the wiring. On mine, it was located in the loom that runs right behind the grill. I traced the wires and found the bad ground and fixed it. Hasn't happened now for 3 years.

Good luck!

[500 MJ]

Solved this a while back. Turned out that I had a bad socket on the front end. Replaced the bad one and then the other one went a few weeks later. Got the new sockets from Carquest - they are steel and ran about $5 each if I remember right.

 

I don't know why it did it when I swapped out the gauges. Must have been just a little bit difference in resistance of the clusters...?