Thought I'd share the solution to a strange problem I had in case it happened to someone else.

One Saturday not too long ago the gauges on my 2008 Ram 1500 stopped working; the entire instrument cluster wouldn't work, though the truck started up and ran fine. I was a day away from driving from North Alabama to Miami for a new assignment; not a distance you want to drive with any electrical problems. I figured if I had to I could survive without a speedo, but my big worry was that it was an indication of a computer malfunction and it would stop running completely on the trip down. Drove it over to my fathers house to pick his brain; we were checking it out when he asked, "What's this?". He was pointing to a new LED flashlight I had just gotten. It's a nice metal Dorcy rechargable LED light that you plug into the power or lighter jack to recharge; I had plugged it in earlier to charge up. Pulled it out, and the gauges came on when I started it again. Shortly later, the gauges would go cycle on and off; looked for all the world like the dash was rebooting over and over. Ended up disconnecting the battery then reconnecting it, then everything worked fine.

I'm not really sure how it messed things up; the only thing I can figure is that starting the truck while it was drawing power messed up the instrumentation program somehow. So, my friends, careful what you have plugged into the power plug when you start your truck! Has anyone else had anything like this happen to them?

 

I had a charger once that I used to plug into my lighter. While the truck was running it was charging but what I didnt know was that when the truck was off it was back feeding and charging the truck and causing it to do weird things. Funny how that happened because it drove my crazy for a while trying to figure it out.

Glad to see you got it resolved.