fearlessbro

Hey guys,

I originally created a thread earlier in the month thinking my XJ was running hotter than it should be. After getting some live data from my OBD Scanner, it turned out the clusters were just inaccurate. Some of the gents in the thread said it might have been a bad ground from the installation of a third party audio system by the PO. I got a little busy gearing up to move this weekend but afterwards I will have a week off to work on the jeep.

My goals are to fix the gauge clusters and hopefully remove the subwoofer eating up my cargo space.

So getting back to focusing on the audio system itself. I've taken more pictures to show you guys what I'm seeing. As far as I can tell, it's been grounded to the frame properly. I do not have a multimeter at the moment but plan to pick one up from walmart this weekend while I move.






The fuse holder connecting to the battery




The waste of space that I am looking to remove





JBL GTO504. Looks like a 4 channel amp



Boss SE750. Looks like a 2 channel amp



The connection to both the amps.





Under the backseats. The blue wire comes from the battery to power this I guess



I believe this is the connection which is grounded to a seatbelt if I am not mistaken

Any advice on taking this apart cleanly would be greatly appreciated. I really just want to get rid of the subwoofer and keep the normal speakers working with whichever amp is powering the speakers. Also any advice on finding ways to fix the gauges would be very much appreciated. Any ideas and suggestions are welcome!

Thank you

moparado

Referencing that last pic, that ground might be ok and probably not.

From the pic, it doesn't look like a quality ground to me.
We're talking big amps here with the sub woofer so a good ground is important.

Looks to me from the pic the ground has to go through a rusty bolt swivel connection to get to the chassis.
The chassis itself should be the target ground connection for a hi amp device like a sub woofer.

Myself, i would relocate that ground to the chassis somewhere to be 100% sure its a quality ground.
Whether its affecting the gauges, who knows til you relocate the ground.

Have you tried totally disconnecting the sub woofer to see if affects the gauges?
Also i don't like the looks of those battery cable clamps.
I'd replace them or in the least clean the cable ends and its mating clamps.

fearlessbro

I disconnected the connection from the battery and it did not affect the gauges at all. I'm not sure if that is an adequate enough test. I do want to remove the subwoofer and from pulling out the speaker connections, it seems that the Boss SE750 is the amp for the subwoofers.

I do see your point about the rusty parts though. As i was uploading the pictures, I was thinking the same thing. I will definitely look to clean up the battery area when I have my week off.

Could it be possible I just have bad gauges?

moparado

Is it only the temp gauge thats off or all of them?
Can you offer more details on what gauges are off and how much?

If its only the temp gauge, it could be the temp. sensor?
Do you have or have access to an infrared temp gun?
They're relatively dirt cheap at HF.
That would indicate conclusively if you have a temp problem or your temp gauge is off.

If its all the gauges, the 1st thing i would do is pull the cluster, check for spread or corroded connector pins and then re-install it.
A 15 minute job.
Make sure any and all grounds under the dash are ok.

Take care of those battery cables/clamps first before you do anything else.
And make sure the battery ground cables to the engine and chassis are gone over by removing them and burnish bright both the terminal and its mating surface with sandpaper then wipe with alcahol and re-install.

Can a cluster be bad? Anything is possible but at this point at least, i doubt it.

BlueRidgeMark

I agree with mopardo almost 100%. The part I don't agree with is:



That ain't okay!

But... those battery cables are also not okay!

There are a few folks floating around here that make upgrade battery cable kits which have a good reputation. Or you can roll your own. Get the military terminals from Crimp Supply, and cables from BestBoatWire.com. I like the clear heat shrink on each end, so I can see what's going on.

From what I can see, your inner fender ground is probably in bad shape, too. (It's not very good from the factory.) After removing it, I drilled out the hole, and then fed a 5/16" stainless bolt through from the back side (after cleaning the area down to clean metal), put a nut on that, then the battery cable, then a lock washer, then another nut. All stainless, all coated with dielectric grease. I don't expect to have any problems with that connection again for the life of the vehicle.

I would not be surprised if cleaning up your basics takes care of your gauge problem. Check out the under-dash grounds, too.

fearlessbro

There are several gauges that are off. These pictures can be found on the original thread if you are interested in viewing them at https://www.cherokeeforum.com/f2/sto...240ish-237259/. Everything is abnormally high on start up/minimal driving however its just the gauges. Live data from the OBD scanner always shows normal, "expected" data.

I will definitely poke around and see if corrosion/rust is causing these problems. It looks like there are two cables grounded at the same spot. Could that be a problem as well?

fearlessbro

I've seen tutorials on how to replace the battery terminals. That looks like a straight forward procedure and seems necessary given the condition of my current ones. Are the cable changes also necessary or only if there is corrosion on the copper wire?

moparado

Yeah, i remember your original thread.
When you tried disconnecting the sub woofer/amp did you make sure there's no power getting to the entire sub woofer system?

Like i said earlier, take care of those grounds and battery clamps before you dive any further into this.
Might even want to jettison the sub woofer NOW for the extra cargo space you wanted.
That would totally eliminate any sub woofer issues as the root cause of the gauge problem.

I would change out the battery clamp-wires with OEM types, 3rd party or Mopar.
Those type clamps you have their which clamp the wire are garbage.

But in the meantime as a temporary troubleshooting tool, you can unclamp the wires, burnish both the wire ends and their clamp mating surfaces bright with sandpaper then wipe clean with alcahol and re-install.
Also clean the battery posts and its clamp area with an automotive battery post cleaning tool.
Even if the clamps work better after the cleaning, they'll definitely cause problems later on. Murphy's Law!

moparado

Huh!

fearlessbro

So the 4 channel amp handles the audio for the regular speakers if I'm not mistaken. However, isn't that being powered via the blue wire shown in 5th image? If I just disconnect all the wires from the subwoofer (leaving the wires hooked up to the stereo or wherever they go currently), will that still use the same energy as having a subwoofer hooked up or should it be fine without a subwoofer attached?


When I disconnected the connection from the positive battery, I think I remember no audio components working at all except the radio receiver (though I'm not 100% sure about that).


I will look into finding military grade clamps and wires. Any good recommendations for store bought brands from walmart, autozone, etc? I'm not sure ordering online is an option right now because of the move and having a short week off

moparado

Man, looks like you have a mess there with that sub woofer.

Is the radio HeadUnit OEM or after market? Does it still work?
If its OEM usually but not always, there's a wire diagram sticker on it somewhere showing the power, ground and wire colors for each speaker which would be a big help.

If the HU is aftermarket then you'll have to dig up the wiring diagram specifically for your Jeep to find what OEM color wires go where.
I'm sure some here would be willing to provide the wiring diagram.

If you want to totally get rid of that sub woofer system, you also need to get rid of that amp and every wire associated with that entire system.
Then I'd get the HU wiring back to stock, which is what i think you want.
Might be a more bigger frustrating project than you expected depending on your electrical skill set.

Far as the battery cables, try any local auto parts store.

Keep us updated and we'll try to help along the way.

BlueRidgeMark

They might be okay, but.... clean them up really well, and check to see if there is any corrosion weeping up the wires under the jacket.

Like moparado said, a cleanup will at least be useful a short term diagnostic, if nothing else.

All the links are right there in my post. Just click on the underlined words.

moparado

Looks like BlueRidge and me are the tag team to get you going.

Is the radio HU OEM or after market?
If its an OEM HU, that should make all this a little easier.

You need to totally disconnect the sub woofer system and re-wire every thing back to stock; speakers, power and ground.

Depending on how the PreviousOwner wired up the stock speakers, this could be easy or a real big PITA.
Be prepared to pull the door trim panels to see whats the PO did at the speaker terminals.
Hopefully the PO left the stock speaker wires intact near the speakers.

fearlessbro

So funny thing that happened yesterday... After work I drove to my barber for a haircut. After I got out, my car would not run. Turns out the corroded battery terminals are finally causing problems. Had to knock them a little to get the car going. Definitely going to try to clean that up today/tomorrow now that I got some time off.

I believe the radio is aftermarket. Its a sony brand one that I think you can pick up from walmart.

I have a friend with a stock cherokee that I will look at to compare the differences. Maybe that can give me an idea of what to remove and what not to. At this point in time, if I can't remove the subwoofer amp and subwoofer without messing with the audio, I'm willing to clean everything out until a later time. I can just play the music from my phone

Edit - And thank you all for the help so far!

BlueRidgeMark

I think they have probably been the source of your problems all along. If you have disconnected the main power to the amp, and you still have gauge problems, that amp is probably not the reason for your gauge problems.

I'd still yank it out of there, but really, you need to get those battery cables squared away.


Crutchfield.com has tons of wiring info on various radios - you can probably find what you need there.