Installed my three gauge pillar yesterday. Started up the truck to go to a buddy's house and the gauges didn't power up. Oh well, I'll look at it later. Halfway to by buddy's i have smoke coming out from under the dash. Pull over and notice that the line that I tapped for power to the potentiometer melted down and was burning. It was a keyed power that I had for a set of lights that light up my flat bed. pull all that out and continue on my way.
This morning I decide that I am going to redo the wiring and run a dedicated ground to the battery negative post plus tap into the wire that Clay's instructions suggested. Got all that done and now I got nothing. The truck will power up but when I turn the key it will not turn over. Not click, nothing. I am at a total loss! No idea what to do from here.

 

I did check every single fuse and they are all good. Bothe under the dash and under the hood.

 

Is the truck in Park? (if auto trans...)

 

yes it is. I looked at that first. This would not be so complicated if there were not a ton of wires under the dash added by the previous owner who was even worse at wiring then I am.

 

just checked the voltage on the batteries. 12.44 volts. That is about right for a truck that isn't running, right?

 

Battery voltage is fine. This is a process of elimination to start with. You said this started with the installation of the gauges so the first step after already having 2 problems now is to disconnect the gauges. A wire never should burn like it did so the first thing to look at is why the fuse did not go and let the wire burn. It was fused right? Now that you connected your gauges to a 2nd wire, you need to make sure that wire has power once you disconnect the gauges from it. I assume you are referring to the wire on your light switch dimmer that you connected it to the 2nd time? If you connected it to the factory ground location under the dash, make sure the gauges are not connected to it (sounds like you ran a new ground already for them) and make sure the factory ground wire is re connected and secure!

Hopefully once you remove the gauges and get things back like it was before you started, your truck will start. If not then look in the mess of wires under your dash as you indicated for other damage from the burnt wire. There may be other wires that got burn from being next to the bad wire and are now shorting together or to a ground. If it isn't starting with the gauges disconnected and all your fuses are good, you might have an open in a wire connection somewhere from working under there on your other wires.

If it does start, check all the gauge wiring again BEFORE you try connecting them again! There is something wrong with the setup if you burnt the 1st wire you connected it to. Hopefully there is no permanent damage to anything and it is just a matter of correcting some connections.

Here is a good source for for your electrical wiring needs for our trucks.
https://sites.google.com/site/woodnt...uty-electrical

Good luck, electrical problems can be very frustrating.

 

I did find that the power point was not working. Pulled the fuse under the hood and it looked fine. Replaced it anyway and now the power point is working. What other fuse might stop the truck from starting?

 

I will undo everything in the AM and see what I can do from there.

 

Got the truck started by having roadside assistance come jump start it. My install of the gauges is so screwed up that I am sure I will never figure out what the hell happened. i will be calling clay tomorrow so i can hopefully figure this all out.

 

Did you get it started after you got the gauges disconnected like I suggested? Why did you need a jump start, did the batteries drain down from working on it or did you have a possible short that was draining them?

Either way, glad you got it started and if you take some pictures of the back of the gauges and your setup, I am sure we could walk you through it.

 

i think the batteries just wore down from working on it. i don't know what I did but somehow there is no power wire going through the dimmer to the gauges. I am out of patients for this truck.

 

the picture in the instructions show an orange wire, a red wire, and a black wire going up to the gauges from the dimmer. it also shows a red wire, black wire, and an orange wire with a black stripe going from the dimmer to the fuse block. I have no red wire coming off of the dimmer at all. and I don't know WTF happened to it. I have a picture of all the wires coming off the dimmer but cannot figure out how to post pictures either. so I am batting 1000 today.

 

If your working with the Isspro gauges yes theres 6 wires on the dimmer switch. You said the red wire going to the gauges, or the power is missing? If you have the dimmer mounted, have you unmounted it so you can take a better look at it? What I thought I read is you have a lot of extra wires under there. Maybe your eyes are playing tricks on you and yourjust missing it.

 

Posting pictures is easiest if you have photobucket. Upload the picture to there, and then use the link form there to here. Took me a bit to.

 

Or you can put them in a gallery in here, then go to "edit gallery" in the user cp and it will give you forum codes to copy and paste pictures