In the dark

[the chief]

My fuel gauge, temp gauge, and volt meter have all decided to stop working at the same time. Can't find a bad fuse. They all started working again for a few minutes but the temp gauge pegged at hot (it was cold) and the volt meter read very low. The Jeep runs fine and seems to be charging. Bad ground somewhere? any ideas?

 

[Les]

My fuel gauge, temp gauge, and volt meter have all decided to stop working at the same time. Can't find a bad fuse. They all started working again for a few minutes but the temp gauge pegged at hot (it was cold) and the volt meter read very low. The Jeep runs fine and seems to be charging. Bad ground somewhere? any ideas?

Based on all those gauges going on the fritz at the same time, you pretty much have to have a bad ground. Granted, it's not a CJ, but my wife's Jeep Cherokee kept having intermittent freakouts with the gauges a few months ago. It continued to start and charge, but would just have weird gauge indications and lights. What I found was a bad ground connection, where the negative (-)side of the battery was connected to the chassis. Once I fixed that, all the problems went away.

Good luck...

 

[the chief]

For the life of me I couldn't find a bad ground. Turns out it was a bad gauge in the speedo cluster affecting several other gauges. Replaced the whole cluster and back in business.