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Real Gauges

1K views 9 replies 7 participants last post by  Darth Jeep 
#1 ·
Greetings To The TJ World!

Well I have the opportunity to start looking for a new to me TJ!:) My thoughts run to my area of greater knowledge the WJ. I know that in 2002 the WJ platform did away with gauges that offered real continuous readings. Instead they offered a look alike gauge that basically showed a pressure of low, or good. This is just about as useless as an idiot light. So my question is did this same dumbing down of the gauges happen in the TJ line, and what year did it happen in?
 
#2 ·
Not sure what you mean as RPM is real continuous as is mph

All TJ have gauges that only read/show what PCM tells them to read via a BUS connection
All the real input from sensors is directly to PCM not to cluster

97-2000 have a CCD bus with a twisted pair of wires

2001-2006 have a single wire PCI BUS

The the JK has a two wire CAN BUS

If you want a cluster where the cluster gets sensor info direct you have to go back to the YJ era




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#3 ·
Yes Digger that is correct information, but Chrysler started in the early 2000's on all platforms providing dumbed down gauges to work with the dumbed down masses of society who were constantly taking their vehicles into the shop for complaints like, "when I go slow my oil gauge goes down, and when I go fast it goes up." We all know this is the normal operation of en engine oiling system, but a lot of folks do not.

So Chrysler, and other auto makers created what were called slide sensors for their gauges. The sensor would not deliver a true real time reading for the gauge. An oil pressure gauge would go up to say 50 PSI when the motor was started, and then it would stay there no matter how much the pressure varied in a set range. The only time that gauge would move is if the pressure dropped below say 10 PSI. Then the gauge would swing down to show low pressure.

Gauges that were affected with this type of change were the oil pressure, engine temperature, and voltage. Naturally a feature like this would be bad on a tach, or speedo.

Having owned more WJ's than TJ's I know it was a running change in the 2002 model year. So I am sure it had to happen to the TJ since it shares the 4.0 motor, and sensors. The question is when did it happen?
 
#4 ·
Try searching the tj tech forum for "low oil pressure" or maybe just "oil pressure". Find one with several responses and see if you can find any posts by Jerry Bransford. I've seen him post about the newer tj's having a different oil pressure gauge. I don't recall if he's mentioned a specific year, but it's a place to start.
 
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