gauge problems

[J-BLAZE]

Gauges just died....oil pressure went to zero,volts went to zero, temp went way past 260 and fuel gauge went to e all at the same time, also blower motor wont turn off,had to unplug it,turn signals wont work and wipers wont turn off. What a day anyone have any idea as to what could possibly cause all this at once? Fuses are fine.............

 

[Fordum]

Sounds like a major wiring malfunction. The fan motor is interesting. If not for that, I would say you had a ground come loose.
I might have better idea if I knew what make, model and year vehicle we are talking about.

If its a 1935 Hupmobile, I got a good idea of whats wrong. If its a 2008 Bugatti Veyron, I gotta consult my notes............

 

[J-BLAZE]

84 k5 silvarado 350

 

[Fordum]

Well, I assume that all this started at the same time. The fan on that model is completely separate from the other stuff.
I was thinking it might be newer and have the fan controlled by a module. But this year is dead simple.
Just a brown wire going to the switch and a resistor between it and the fan motor.

Also, the wipers are stand alone. So, if both are not turning off, something has crossed wired and is supplying power to them.

They should both go off with the ignition switch. If they don't even go off then, then you have problem that should be easy to find.

The only way all those systems could malfunction at the same time, that I can see is if part of the wiring harness has gotten damaged.
Look under the hood to see if the wires have gotten over on the exhaust manifold, or a rat has been gnawing on them.

Turn the key on if you have to, turn the wipers and fan off, and reach under and start shaking wires until they go off.

Unless you just happened to be unlucky enough for the fan switch to fail just as the other stuff happened, I would concentrate on it first.
There are 4 wires going to the switch. The brown one is the power lead. The switch hooks it to either the light blue, yellow or orange wire depending on which speed you want.
If the switch is not bad, then something is supplying power to one of the wires besides the brown.

The wires go from the switch to a grommet on the firewall and to the resistor in the air box.
Then from there the orange wire goes to the fan.
So, it should be simple to see where the power is coming from. Hopefully finding that will show you what is going on.

Of course, if you unplug the switch and the fan stops, then you have a bad switch and you might as well ignore it until you find the other problems.
When in doubt, check grounds.

BTW, DO NOT run the fan with the resistor pack out of the air box. The resistors have to have air blowing on them or they will burn up.

 

[Fordum]

Lost your post. It has scrolled off to the next page. Did you find out about the fan motor?
When you have a lot of malfunctions that all occur at the same time, you can drive yourself crazy trying to fix everything at once.

So, you pick a symptom, and find out what is causing it. If its unrelated to the main problem, then you have eliminated it from the mix. If it is related, often it will point to where the main problem is.

That is why I zeroed in on the fan motor. Since its not a new enough truck to have a computerized or complicated control, it is fairly easy to check.
If its the switch, then we move to another symptom. If it keep running with the switch disconnected, then that gives us a place to look.

Also, while you are checking, concentrate on ground wires. If your truck has the little pigtail from the negative battery clamp to the body, make sure its good.
Part of it really sounds like a bad ground.

I'm under a tornado warning, and its flatrocking outside right now, so I may not be online much longer.
I'll check back tomorrow unless something I can't handle shows up.

 

[J-BLAZE]

hope everything turned out ok, we dont have to deal with to often here in florida....... yes you were correct the switch had gone bad on the dash for the blower motor, the wire for the turn signals is completely fried from fuse panel into column, checked all fuseable links and they are fine. someone else had posted here very simmilar problems so i jumped in on his and have gotten to the point that now we think it may be ignition ?????

 

[Fordum]

Yep, just a good thunderstorm. Didn't even hear a tornado like I have a few times. Power went off, and my genset is down for maintenance so I was offline for a while.

Being in Crawfordville, you were probably getting the leading edge of it while I was in the middle.
The worst went north of me, and even more of it went north of you.

Which wire did it burn up on the turn signals? If you can tell. Sometimes its hard to figure out what color a wire was originally.

Check out wire .8 blk 150 in this diagram. Its kinda the master ground for a ton of stuff, and might be your problem for a lot of things.
Not only could it coming disconnected cause all kind of problems, but if it touched the wiper wire, then that would burn it up.

Its a little strange that a wiper wire would fry like that. The fuse usually blows before anything like that happens.

 

[J-BLAZE]

today is my lucky day, i also have a wire prob with the rear power window, went out earlier to track it down. traced it to the engine bay and when i moved some other wires around there were sparks every where, repaired that and it turned out to be the problem all along. looks like it may have been the wire running for the gas gauge. it shorted and took all other gauges with it, turn signals and also power to distributor. after repair everthing is working proper. still have to replace switch for heater and track down that break in rear window wire but atleast i can drive and know how much fuel i have and keep track of the vitals. thank you very much for your time. hopefully someday i will have a solution for one of your issues...............going to buy lottery tickets, maybe this streak will last a lil while longer

 

[badmix]

CB radio getting major interferrence

Oops wrong post.

 

[badmix]

oops

 

[Fordum]

I knew it was some kind of cross connection. Glad you found it. I was getting on to warn you that the schematics for the wiper motor and switch are wrong.
Couple of wires are not what they should be, and others are just in the wrong place.

I'm going to put my copies in a program and make corrections one of these days and post them here so people won't spend time trying to figure out how they work.