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Air bag and tach problems.

jdogg4

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Evans Colorado.
I just searched through 8 pages and found nothing to what my jeep is doing. This is the stock 98xj and the woman the other day said the air bag light came on then turned off. Ok well I was driving it on sat and sunday and it did the same thing to me. Didn't think much about it, but when it comes on my tac and speedomator go dead. the other oil fuel temp are all fine they hold true to form but the other two go dead. There wasn't any powerlose when driving. It did this about 4 5 times on sunday and it did the same thing every time. Monday it was fine and so far today no problems. Other than taking it in after work to have the codes pulled on it I'm not sure what the deal is. Never seen or heard of this problem before. Any info/help would be great.

Thanks J.
 
Chrysler technical bulletin 08-15-99 deals with this. Basically it is caused by light corrosion of the connector to the back of the cluster, the official fix is to replace one of the connectors,
 
O man ok should be able to do that. Were are you getting the bulletin 08-15-99 # is it off a service site or?

Thanks for the info.
 
Unplug your battery
Remove the radio bezel, pull straight out from bottom on both sides of console
Remove the trim around the drivers side dash
Remove screws from instrument panel cover
Remove screws from instrument panel
Pull straight out, it is self docking.
Turn over and clean the 2 ten pin plugs back there.
Clean the 2 ten pin sockets.
Plug cluster back in and do the reverse of removal.
When I did mine the first time I 'tweaked' the pins a hair, and I mean a hair, almost not noticable. This made them fit a bit tighter in the sockets, tweak them too much and you might bend one or more putting the panel back in. I also put some dielectric grease on them. I repeated the process a couple of years later when I swapped out my idiot light cluster and replaced it with a gauge cluster out of a wrangler [same gauge panels, just different colors].
Been in there for almost 3 years now and is just fine except for the gas gauge and thats from the crummy senders jeep used in them. I have a 98 also.
 
nice thanks for the directions. I've taken off the center part a few times so thats wasn't a an issue the rest I was wondering about. I'm going to try and do that this weekend.

Thanks again.
 
I have a 98XJ also. Same problem. The speedo and/or tach would intermittently go to zero, then back to normal after a pothole. Occasionally the air bag idiot light would also come on and sometimes stay on for awhile. Unnerving! My fix was the same (as I've stated in a couple other posts). Maybe it'll help U. Remove the entire speedo/tach gauge cluster and gently tighten each small (Phillips head) contact (screw) on the back until it's snug. Don't strip the threads, but snug 'em up firm. Gauge/idiot light problems went away 4 good. Good luck.
 
I tried doing this last night but couldn't get the trim over the headlight switch knob (which I also couldn't get off).

I was covered in grease and dirt, it was about 95 degrees, with 90% humidy w/a 100% chance of mosquitos so I gave up rather than just rip it out.
 
It comes out and I don't remember having to do ANYTHING with my headlight switch on my 98, The only 'hard' part was getting the cluster out from between the dash and the steering wheel and on a scale of 1-10 that was a 2...
 
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