I finally decided to tackle the gauges. man have I mentioned I hate wiring. well I bought this gauge package because it had this nice plug and play harness that plugged right into the stock wiring harness. I get the gauges and they sent a universal wiring harness. not happy. I called and talked to them. apparently they stopped making the plug and play harness, but still advertise it with those pictures. that is pretty dishonest if you ask me. they did offer to take them back and refund me, but all the other instrument clusters for this car also just come with a universal harness so I while I would get the satisfaction of not giving them my money, it would not help me out any so I decided to keep them. I am going to give them a scathing review however. anyway I finally decided to tackle it. there instructions suck by the way. they tell you how to wire up the universal harness to the gauges in the cluster. gee thanks all the gauges come with instructions then the instructions literally say to use an electrical tester and probe the wires and wire the vehicle side wiring to the correct wires.
no pinout diagram no help at all in figuring out wich wires go where. I finally found a decent diagram on line to help me get some idea what wires go where. I did a bunch of research to make sure where the wires go. I ran new wires for the oil and temp sending unit. after buying the setup and reviewing the wiring for the electronic speedometer I discovered that wiring an electronic speedometer to this car frequently causes problems with the cruise control since this car had a composite speed sensor/speedometer cable unit. so I decided heck with it and bought a gps speedometer like what I have in the yj. then I just cut the speedometer cable off at the sender and left the speed sensor in place so that should not affect my cruise control or my idle because the computer uses the speed sensor in adjusting the idle as well.
so once I figured out all the wiring I test fit the cluster.
then I decided since I have the dash apart and my stereo never worked the way I thought it should. ( I always had to open my phone and push play on my phone to get the blue tooth to play instead of just pushing play on the remote, and the microphone for the hand free calling never worked) I decided to swap the stereo and the front speakers. so I waited for crutchfield to send me some new speakers and stereo. crutchfield stuff is always good. the speakers fit perfectly, but for some reason the wiring harness adapters would not fit onto the new speakers so I had to cut the positive connectors off and put new ones on, but no big deal.
then I wired up the new harness adapter for the stereo. pretty straightforward, all plug and play pretty much. the wires are even the same color, so not hard. plugged it in and it worked fine first try yeaah.
ok. so after that I decided I should test all my connections on my instrument cluster and everything worked except my gauge lights. I had forgotten to hook up the instrument light wire. no big deal just pull off four screws, find the correct wire and t-tap it in. turned on the light switch and it worked, adjust the dimmer, it dims and brightens just like it should. then I started the car and the stupid instrument lights came on. they are not supposed to do that lol. It was getting late. and I was aggravated. I tested the wires, couldn't find anywhere that I had a crossed wire, no reason that there should be any current going from my 12v to my dimmer circuit. but there was. I decided to work on something else for a while and so I started modifying the housing to fit the new cluster. that was a major PITA as well. once I finally got it to fit reasonably well it was late and I quit for the night.
Oh I almost forgot. I also was told by someone I should get a wide band o2 sensor since I had the supercharger on there so I got one and wired it and my new matching boost gauge into the new pillar pod.
so I was talking to my Dad at supper tonight and we were discussing the light issue, and he asked me about the stereo install. I did not really think that was the issue at first because while there was a dash illumination wire on the wiring harness adapter, the new stereo did not have one so I just left that wire unconnected. but that got me to thinking when I wired up my pillar gauges there was a t-tap attached to the dimmer switch so I just pulled that tap and wired my new gauges and that wire together and plugged them back in. I did not look to see where that original wire went. it turns out it was a park brake wire. when the old stereo was installed apparently they bypassed the park brake by running a wire to the dash illumination wire. when I plugged the new wiring harness in somehow that wire was still connected to something so I just removed it. now everything works properly.
