Some dash lights not working

Lilbomb

TJ Enthusiast
Joined
Oct 10, 2018
Messages
155
Location
Reno, NV
Ok so on Tuesday morning at 5am I started the Jeep and all was good. I pulled away from the house and after about 50 feet the dash lights went out. Then I started to smell something burning. I flipped around and parked and checked it out, did not see anything. I grabbed a fire extinguisher from the house (sorry wife and kids, Jeep is a little more important at the moment) and went to work. The burning smell was gone after a minute or so.

The strange thing is that when I turn the Jeep on some of the dash lights work, I have attached a photo below of what comes on. The only lights that are out are the ones that light up the gauges. I checked the fuses but it only looks like there may be 1 or 2 that deal with the dash and they seem ok. I haven't had time to pull the dash out yet and inspect behind it but will this weekend.

Any thoughts?

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I haven't seen the back of a TJ dash panel yet (at least not what's beneath the white plastic) but I would hazard to guess that there's some blown resistors in there. That happened on my brother's car once at least, I took it out and he knew how to replace the resistors himself.

Only thing you can really do is exploratory surgery, and I would start with checking out that panel. Try also seeing if you can smell the burn in any area, since it just happened you may be able to sniff it out! If you don't see (or smell) anything try swapping one of the lights you know works with one of the ones that is out. Chances are that won't work, it's one thing if one light goes out, it's another when multiple do (unless they're wired in series as opposed to parallel).

Some issues tend to be much more probable than others like my brother's car was: what happened was a common issue with that model. So you hear about issues happening, like the oil pump drive on the 4.0. This though? Not that I've ever heard of.

Good luck!

Edit: also, just to check, you should be able to hold down the trip counter reset and turn from off to accessory three times (within five seconds IIRC). That'll do a dash function test and should go through all the lights and gauges. Make sure you double check that, maybe take a video as you do it and confirm what works what and doesn't.

Here's a video of the test, from what I remember you can let go of the button once it starts.

 
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Ok, update. I was wrong....it was a fuse. I attached a photo of the fuse it was. Says "Park LPS Skim". The weird thing is that it's supposed to have a 20A fuse in there and it had a 30A for some reason and the 30A blew. That's kind of concerning. Put a 20A back in it yesterday morning and drove it around for two days now and it's been good. Strange.
IMG_3608.jpg
 
I haven't seen the back of a TJ dash panel yet (at least not what's beneath the white plastic) but I would hazard to guess that there's some blown resistors in there. That happened on my brother's car once at least, I took it out and he knew how to replace the resistors himself.

Only thing you can really do is exploratory surgery, and I would start with checking out that panel. Try also seeing if you can smell the burn in any area, since it just happened you may be able to sniff it out! If you don't see (or smell) anything try swapping one of the lights you know works with one of the ones that is out. Chances are that won't work, it's one thing if one light goes out, it's another when multiple do (unless they're wired in series as opposed to parallel).

Some issues tend to be much more probable than others like my brother's car was: what happened was a common issue with that model. So you hear about issues happening, like the oil pump drive on the 4.0. This though? Not that I've ever heard of.

Good luck!

Edit: also, just to check, you should be able to hold down the trip counter reset and turn from off to accessory three times (within five seconds IIRC). That'll do a dash function test and should go through all the lights and gauges. Make sure you double check that, maybe take a video as you do it and confirm what works what and doesn't.

Here's a video of the test, from what I remember you can let go of the button once it starts.

Hi there. Thanks for the video you shared. I have a similar issue where the gauges are not lit up. When I do a test as done on the video, it comes up with bus 60, bus 61, and bus 68. Would you have any idea what this points to? Thanks Tony
 
Ok, update. I was wrong....it was a fuse. I attached a photo of the fuse it was. Says "Park LPS Skim". The weird thing is that it's supposed to have a 20A fuse in there and it had a 30A for some reason and the 30A blew. That's kind of concerning. Put a 20A back in it yesterday morning and drove it around for two days now and it's been good. Strange. View attachment 68211
Looks like the Rear Wipe (6) calls for a 20A, and there is a 10A installed. Just an observation.
 
Ok, update. I was wrong....it was a fuse. I attached a photo of the fuse it was. Says "Park LPS Skim". The weird thing is that it's supposed to have a 20A fuse in there and it had a 30A for some reason and the 30A blew. That's kind of concerning. Put a 20A back in it yesterday morning and drove it around for two days now and it's been good. Strange.

View attachment 68211

Thank you so much I know this is an old post but you are a genius that worked for me as well! Thank you thank you!