I am very new to the Jeep XJ world. I purchased a 2001 XJ with 129,000 miles on it. It is in very good shape and mostly stock, however it is the "plain-jane" model with only cruise and tilt. I can live without power windows and I can install power locks and remote start, but main concern is having idiot lights instead of gages.

I did do a serveral seaches for starting this thread because I know many people have probably swapped their idiot lights with gages, but I didn't find anything. Does there have to be new wiring run? do the sensors have to be changed? How much of a bear is it to get the dash apart to get at the gages? Can the odometer be separated from the gage cluster so I can still state the correct miles?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

I just did the swap three days ago. There wasnt much written about the 97 and up guages, so I dove in head first. 20 minutes later I had a fully functioning clusther! All the wiring is there, Jeep was just worried about cutting 10 dollars in costs and not putting gauges in. Your gonna want the full cluster, because with how the xj's cooling system is, the idiot light goes off when its too late (220 degrees)

 

my 99 was plug and play. its awesome to have real gauges

 

so you guys didnt have to swap oil pressure or temp sensors? sounds good, my bro is buying a '97 with the idiot light dash and we are gonna want to swap it.