I need HELP with electrical issues!

[HeavyMetalFox]

OK, this is a really weird one and I don’t know if anybody else has experienced it! My Jeep dash/gauges randomly freaks the F out! Like I will be driving on the highway at highway speeds and all of a sudden for no reason every single dash light comes on. And about 10% of the time when that happens, the gauges also freak out! Like the RPMs and speed pointer flip back-and-forth and then just bottom out while I’m driving! And show that I have zero speed, zero RPM while I am travelling along the highway. At one time it even locked up my steering wheel on me while I was driving! I was able to strong arm it off the road. I do have a really good code scanner at home and it’s been to multiple shops! When you put the scanner on it every single possible code comes up! I’m talking 12 pages of codes! I did find a melted spot in my fuse box where a radio shop bent a fuse in half (don’t ask me why). But it was causing an arc and so I replaced the entire fuse box and fuses. Seemed to have quieted down for a while, but it’s doing it again. Nothing changes with the jeep and how it drives when the gauges freak out. There’s no backfire, there’s no lugging or hesitation. The Jeep is driving perfectly fine when the dash lights freak out except for that one time when it seized up my steering wheel. And another time that it went into limp mode while driving slow on my home street. I can even do some hard-core off roading and everything is fine. Now the interesting part is if I turn the Jeep off for two minutes and back on again, everything resets and the jeep is fine! All of my research and every shop I talk to you tells me there are several things that can cause this to happen. The shop says that the modules in the Jeep do not always communicate with each other and that is likely causing the freak out. But sometimes they communicate just fine and sometimes they don’t, and we don’t know why that is. One shop blamed my mods. But the only mods that I have goes straight to the battery! Winch. Lights. VHF radio.
So far, I have swapped out the mini battery. I don’t want to swap out the big battery because it’s not old and it’s a yellow top but when I test it, it’s not weak. Googling this has said it can be a canbus or the BCM. One shop told me there are four star sensors that are a common cause. My husband says that’s just a different name for the canbus. Which he tried to swap out two months ago and that made things worse. The Jeep wouldn’t even start with the new canbus he bought so we put the old one back in. It seems that there are many potential causes of electrical system failure like this. All of which can be quite spendy to work our way through with process of elimination. I’m just reaching out to see if someone else as had a similar experience and might be able to offer some insight before I spend thousands of dollars chasing this. well …thousands of dollars more…

my Jeep is a 2020 JLUR with a 3.6L. With 131,787 km no longer under warranty. I have performed all of the recommended services at the recommended times. I did re-Geat it in October in a very professional auto shop. I did perform all the mandatory break-in processes, including draining the diff fluid after 2000 km and refilling it. I did inspect that fluid and there was no fragments or shiny particles. And this probably didn’t start until December. However, a year ago I did start getting weird codes for ABS failure and inspect four-wheel-drive. However, I did replace the ABS plug and have had the four-wheel-drive checked. One funny thing that has been happening for several years is it will pop out of 4L mid obstacle. That may not be related, however.

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[AzCoronaDog]

The first thing I would check for is a bad ground somewhere. Start at the battery and work outwards. The electronics are very sensitive to voltage, so everything has it's own ground wire that runs to one of the several dedicated ground studs throughout the Jeep. This is way better than just grounding to any spot on the frame like older vehicles did, but if one of those ground stud nuts come loose, all sorts of weird stuff can happen. (Not that we drive our Jeeps on any rough roads... LOL.)

 

[Fish]

it is almost 100% this.

 

[Bob Burd]

It's certainly related to the CANBUS (which is a network, not a module), could be the green block, could be in the wiring (intermittent open or short), could be a module going bad, could be a faulty ground as mentioned. It's very difficult to debug if it happens only occasionally.
Aside from checking grounds, you could try wiggling wires connected to green block while driving to see if you can reproduce fault.
If you can reliably create the fault, there are more steps I could suggest to debug, but they are useless if it happens only occasionally.
Btw, the steering wheel is not locking up, it's the power steering going out (because it is connected to the CANBUS network along with lots of other stuff). I've had this happen when I was chasing similar issues with mine. You can muscle the wheel to get it to turn as long as the Jeep is moving, even at slow speeds.

 

[Andy@AAV]

Try another battery? And check the cables to ground as mentioned.

 

[SPPhillips]

I agree with the above posts. Loose wire/faulty ground. Cheapest test is to pop the hood, start Jeep and start wiggling wire harnesses to narrow down the culprit. Good luck and happy trails.

 

[Bill_BCNtoNY]

Long shot, but check whether you accidentally nicked a wire when you installed the VHF. The passthrough between the passenger footwell and the engine bay is notoriously tight!

(maybe you routed the wiring for the winch or lights through there, but that’s less common)

 

[Ear Responsible]

OK, this is a really weird one and I don’t know if anybody else has experienced it! My Jeep dash/gauges randomly freaks the F out! Like I will be driving on the highway at highway speeds and all of a sudden for no reason every single dash light comes on. And about 10% of the time when that happens, the gauges also freak out! Like the RPMs and speed pointer flip back-and-forth and then just bottom out while I’m driving! And show that I have zero speed, zero RPM while I am travelling along the highway. At one time it even locked up my steering wheel on me while I was driving! I was able to strong arm it off the road. I do have a really good code scanner at home and it’s been to multiple shops! When you put the scanner on it every single possible code comes up! I’m talking 12 pages of codes! I did find a melted spot in my fuse box where a radio shop bent a fuse in half (don’t ask me why). But it was causing an arc and so I replaced the entire fuse box and fuses. Seemed to have quieted down for a while, but it’s doing it again. Nothing changes with the jeep and how it drives when the gauges freak out. There’s no backfire, there’s no lugging or hesitation. The Jeep is driving perfectly fine when the dash lights freak out except for that one time when it seized up my steering wheel. And another time that it went into limp mode while driving slow on my home street. I can even do some hard-core off roading and everything is fine. Now the interesting part is if I turn the Jeep off for two minutes and back on again, everything resets and the jeep is fine! All of my research and every shop I talk to you tells me there are several things that can cause this to happen. The shop says that the modules in the Jeep do not always communicate with each other and that is likely causing the freak out. But sometimes they communicate just fine and sometimes they don’t, and we don’t know why that is. One shop blamed my mods. But the only mods that I have goes straight to the battery! Winch. Lights. VHF radio.
So far, I have swapped out the mini battery. I don’t want to swap out the big battery because it’s not old and it’s a yellow top but when I test it, it’s not weak. Googling this has said it can be a canbus or the BCM. One shop told me there are four star sensors that are a common cause. My husband says that’s just a different name for the canbus. Which he tried to swap out two months ago and that made things worse. The Jeep wouldn’t even start with the new canbus he bought so we put the old one back in. It seems that there are many potential causes of electrical system failure like this. All of which can be quite spendy to work our way through with process of elimination. I’m just reaching out to see if someone else as had a similar experience and might be able to offer some insight before I spend thousands of dollars chasing this. well …thousands of dollars more…

my Jeep is a 2020 JLUR with a 3.6L. With 131,787 km no longer under warranty. I have performed all of the recommended services at the recommended times. I did re-Geat it in October in a very professional auto shop. I did perform all the mandatory break-in processes, including draining the diff fluid after 2000 km and refilling it. I did inspect that fluid and there was no fragments or shiny particles. And this probably didn’t start until December. However, a year ago I did start getting weird codes for ABS failure and inspect four-wheel-drive. However, I did replace the ABS plug and have had the four-wheel-drive checked. One funny thing that has been happening for several years is it will pop out of 4L mid obstacle. That may not be related, however.

My girlfriend had the same problem.
There is a guy in Italy that can fix it .

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