TheBeardedOne

So a bit of background: I have a 2000 xj with approximately 241k miles on it. It doesn't get driven much in the summer and it had been sitting for approximately 3 weeks. Last week I fired it up to go camping. Although it was running fine, I quickly realized all my gauges were reading 0 and the check engine came on with "no buS" on the odometer. Time to repack everything into my other car. Wonderful.

When I got home, I went through a ton of threads on here looking for a solution. Almost every suggestion was for cleaning the connectors on the back of the gauge cluster, cleaning grounds, and a few people mentioned they had luck with replacing the cluster. I pulled the dash apart, cleaned all the connectors, cleaned all of the engine grounds that I had just cleaned 3 months ago when I was troubleshooting a drivability issue (trans bolts fell out), and even replaced the cluster with one out of a junkyard. No dice. I was sweating because it won't pass New York State inspection with the CEL on. I wondered if the issue was the connector on the dash harness (see TSB 08-15-99). Unfortunately the connector is NLA from Chrysler so replacing it with a shiny new one was out of the question. But it all looked clean, so I was pretty sure that wasn't my issue.

Then I found a clue. Normally the keyless entry is pretty reliable, but lately it had only been working intermittently. I tried playing with the door lock switch (on both the driver's and passenger side) and the gauges updated momentarily... then the no buS came back and my tach dropped back to zero.

What I found: My windshield has been leaking for a while which was pretty evident by the rust when I pulled the dash top. I never have water on the passenger floorboard, but sometimes had a puddle on the driver's side after a heavy rain. I pulled the kick cover off my fuse panel on the passenger side and started poking around. It turns out I have a bunch of corrosion in the driver's side door harness connector. As soon as I unplugged it, my gauges started working normally. Plug it back in and no buS. Unplug it and they work.

my electronic locks don't work with the harness unplugged so I'm going to try cleaning and/or replacing the connectors. If that doesn't work, I plan on replacing the door harness and electronics, but for now, the no buS issue is gone.

In the 100 or so threads I've read over the past week, I didn't see anyone mention that the door harnesses/power lock mechanisms are tied into bus. Hopefully this helps somebody else who might be fighting this issue.

BlueRidgeMark

That's a good find! Thanks for passing that on.

CRC Contact cleaner is your friend!