• NAXJA is having its 18th annual March Membership Drive!!!
    Everyone who joins or renews during March will be entered into a drawing!
    More Information - Join/Renew
  • Welcome to the new NAXJA Forum! If your password does not work, please use "Forgot your password?" link on the log-in page. Please feel free to reach out to [email protected] if we can provide any assistance.

Weird electrical problems:

zluster

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Colorado Baby!
2000 XJ

Pulled the dash tonight to replace the evaporator. Got the old one out and the new one in....


BUT during the process something somewhere went wrong.

I first noticed after getting the dash assembly back in place that the door locks weren't working, just made some odd clicking noises all around, when I tried to hit the door locks the rear defrost light would come on and I would get the backlight on the buttons like when the parking lights is on.

I fiddle around some more pull connectors check them etc. nothing seems wrong, cannot find any evidence of frayed wires etc.

hook everything back up and try again.

This time when hitting the lock I get the emergency flashers to flash.

I do this a couple of times and then it changes to when I hit lock I get the horn blowing.

So ya, I hit lock, and the horn blows.



This is a long shot, but has anyone ever run into anything similar?
 
Are you sure? I vaguely remember having to remove a ground screw or two.. I think.

I sure didn't, but would love to know if there were some to check.

At this point though I'm thinking there are some rubbed through insulation shorting out wires.(I'm guessing hidden behind some electrical tape wrap)

I don't see any other way that my door locks would trigger the flashes one sec, and then the horn the next.
 
Well I discovered the problem. For those of you who haven't played around with this type of thing before having bad grounds can give the weirdest electrical issues. (I don't know how many light problems I've seen because of loose ground on the fender support up by the ECU).

Well as JJacobs and I both have experenced this same thing we both thought of bad ground. So I went and looked through the FSM trying to find any other grounds I didn't know of to check. I couldn't find any.

However as it turns out there are two main grounds that aren't mentioned in the FSM. The dash grounds. On various places up behind the dash there are grounded wires. All these wires connect to the metal grounding structure of the dash. This grounds out through the two pivot bolts.

So if your putting your dash back in and don't have those two bolts tightened completely, you could have issue's like I did.

Man, wish I could have figured that out last night at 6:30. If it hadn't of been for this issue the dash pull replacment, and reinstall of everything would have only taken about 3 hours. Really not that bad of a job.
 
Back
Top