Electrical help. This blows my mind.

So I went to start my Jeep this morning and nothing happened. No lights, no radio, only the temp gauge moved but other than that, nothing. No sounds or anything. So I tried jumping it and that didn't work. I had to leave for work but my dad looked at it for a while and realized the grounding cable was beat to hell and probably wasn't getting connectivity and he thought for sure that was the problem. He tested wires with the volt meter and the only thing that made sense was a lack of a ground. So tonight I replaced the ground wire and still it didn't fix anything. Then for the hell of it we disconnected the wire that powers my lights. This wire runs directly from the lights on top to the battery so it should work when we give it power because it's completely unrelated right? Well it didn't work. The lights wouldn't turn on. Now my dad and I are completely stumped. We both thought something like this would be physically impossible. Anybody got any ideas?

Did you check all your fuses? I recently had my positive battery cable take a crap after 12 years of baking under the hood, so it might be something like that.

igotanxj said:

Did you check all your fuses? I recently had my positive battery cable take a crap after 12 years of baking under the hood, so it might be something like that.

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No I didn't but the weird thing is is the lights. We ran power from the jumper box (that was good and working) directly to the sole wire that powers the lights and nothing happened. That is what really through us for a loop so we kind of stopped checking things after that.

so you went from the jumper box to the power side of the lights? What about the ground side? Did you check your ground connection FROM the battery to the body ground? What did you get for resistance for the cables you checked?

Edit: I would still definitely check all the fuses under the hood

igotanxj said:

so you went from the jumper box to the power side of the lights? What about the ground side? Did you check your ground connection FROM the battery to the body ground? What did you get for resistance for the cables you checked?

Edit: I would still definitely check all the fuses under the hood

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Didn't check because it's almost 11 here and we don't have the right meter to check. My dad will grab one tomorrow (it's nice having a dad who's a snap-on dealer) and we were then gonna check everything. But the ground wire was brand new so it shouldn't be that. The Jeep worked fine last night and then all of a sudden today it doesn't work.

Edit: Power was positive cable on jumper box to the power cable for lights. Ground was negative cable from jumper box to brand new ground cable on battery connected to engine block.

Neutral safety switch issue?

did you check the ground strap from the back of the cylinder head to the firewall? this strap seems to be extremely important if you want your renix to run properly. that is, if this applies to the jeep mentioned in your sig. all kinds of weird stuff can happen if it has a bad connection. just a thought.