Temp Dash Outage

Just Got My 98 Xj A Month Ago. Let It Sit For The Weekend And When I Restarted It The Entire Dash Electrical Was Out For About 10 Minutes, Then Came Back?????? Has Anyone Seen This?

Yes, happens to alot of 97/98XJ's. It is the two self docking plugs in the back of the instrument panel. Two fixes, one is take it to the dealer and have them repair it, they replace the plugs with new and tighter ones. Second method is to pull the center bezel out from around the radio, remove lower knee panel under the steering wheel and remove the big trim piece from around the instrument cluster. Unscrew the instrument panel and remove it. Look on the back of the instrument panel, you will see two connectors with pins, tweak those pins just a hair after you clean them off, I used some iso alchol and a qtips, then plug it back in, if you feel any tightness stop and pull it back out. You need to be really careful how much you tweak those pins or they will bend going back in. That should fix it. One other thing I had on mine, down on the floor, left side on the firewall, is a big grey connector box, it has a bolt in the center, make sure that bolt is tight. Mine was so loose that the block was falling out and giving me intermittant connections on some bumps. Don't force anything, however there are two spring pins on the trim piece around the bezel and two more around the trim piece around the instrument cluster, they just pull out. One important thing, DISCONNECT your battery and wait 20 min, you will be playing around the airbag and it's not a fun thing if it goes off, the 20 min will give the unit time to discharge and drain any residual stored power.

Yup... what he said