Hello there, having electrical issues with my '98 dodge ram 1500. I have no real experience with working on vehicles aside from switching out basic parts. I am a "diy-er" and I hate spending an exorbitant amount of money to fix something I can myself. Anyways, my truck is showing about 5 or so blown fuses: ABS, radio, seatbelts, and a couple others I cannot remember off the top of my head. In addition to those fuses my speedometer, and odometer are out as well as the buzzer. The check engine light is also on. I have already replaced the fuses several times to see if that would resolve the issue but it has not. From what I remember all the problems manifested themselves at the same time, to me this means the problems most likely are all connected. Having spoken with people wiser than I they suggested I start checking the grounds first but looking at the electrical diagrams in my haynes manual there seems to be a whole lot of grounds. I guess thats to be expected but I have no idea where to start looking. Someone suggested start with the engine bay grounds but since my issue seems to be in the cabin I dont know why I would start there. I don't really want to dive into this till I have a game plan because I imagine I will be taking my truck apart. If someone could give me some direction.

 

Have you done any recent work under the hood? There is plenty of grounds under the hood that can and WILL cause an issue... You are saying that all those fuses are blown? Did they blow again once you replaced them?

 

For future reference:
https://dodgeforum.com/forum/dodge-r...s-section.html

 

If you are chasing grounds the place to start would be on the drivers side below the headlight housing, and just up and below the battery tray on the frame there are like 10 grounds that are connected there. My connector was so corrode that wires fell off.

If they're bad you can pull that harness off and have a good connector crimped on or do it yourself. It takes a special crimping tool that you may not have a local auto shop should have one. Remember your ground wires are Black.

 

Grounds aren't going to be it. You need to find the commonality between the various systems that are failing.... like, where do they all get power from.... look AFTER the fuse block, and see what, if anything, they have in common, especially wire routing. You have a short somewhere, that causes an excessive current draw, and blows the fuse. Since you have multiple systems going at once, i would suspect a bulkhead connector, or pass-thru first.

 

HeyYou is onto something there. A rubber grommet that has wires going thru the bulkhead or door jam are likely causing it. Whatever protects them from the edge of a steel surface is worn thru somehow. The good news is that the fuses that are blowing are the indicator as to what you can look for. That means that if the radio, dash lights seat belts fuses etc are blowing, look for the wire clusters that contain wires for those circuits. I had a similar situation on an older gen 1 ram - the bulkhead connector looked fine as it sat, but when I disconnected it- -tons of corrosion & even a few rusted off wires. It took some time to fix it, but I got it & it did not fail again as long as I owned it. I have a small tip for this also - there are di-electric greases that you can pack those connectors with that will prevent a lot of that from happening but I used pure bees wax since these were connections that had no excess heat involved. Pure bees was is also good for waterproofing leather shoes, boot, seats etc. If you don't know where to get it, look for snowseal shoe waterproofer in the shoe section of your nearest farm & fleet type store. It is pure beeswax. I used to work for a toy company that made remote control stuff. I took apart the servo & receiver & packed those with pure bees wax & was able to run around in pouring rain for hours without a single short. They thought I was nuts but it worked.