Electrical issues

Chris41586 · March 10

So I've been chasing this around for a long time now. It's been going on for 6 years, but has recently gotten much worse. I'll be driving, and my gauges all drop and every warning chime goes off. Blinkers and lights still work on the outside, but nothing on the inside. The cluster back light is still on, but gauges not working. At first it would only happen in the extreme heat or cold, and only here and there(like every few months), which made me think there's Expansion and contraction, breaking a connection somewhere. Lately it has been happening almost every time I drive, and in any temperature. Most Recently even my head unit will shut off. If it is not reset by the time I get out of my truck the head unit will stay on and drain my battery. With all of the research, I see similar issues, but nothing the exact same. There seems to be a lot of ground issues With these trucks, and I've looked at everything I can find with no luck. My gut says it's a connection issue of some sort, whether ground or not. Any info greatly appreciated. I tried uploading a video of the issue, but it says the file it too large, even after cutting it down to a few seconds

MikeBMW · March 11

Definitely a ground issue.
Have you run a diagnostic with a good reader?

Chris41586 · March 11

23 minutes ago, MikeBMW said:

Definitely a ground issue.
Have you run a diagnostic with a good reader?

What's a good reader? I've been able to go by AutoZone right when this is happening, but it doesn't throw any codes. I was wondering if there's a tool that can analyze the whole electrical system, but haven't heard of any. Something I found today, is there are several things that have been messed with on the wiring. The Serial Data Gateway Module has been removed before and one of the wires going into the harness for it have been spliced. A couple other harness in the same area have electrical tape on them, and there was a wire coming from the plug in the back of the cluster that had a piece of tape marking a wire. This truck looked new when I bought it with 10k miles, but had a lift and nice tires. I had wondered why someone would trade it in right away, but maybe there were electrical issues right when they bought it? I'll include a couple pictures of what I found today. All I can think right now, is to try and find diagrams for what each wire is, but I wish they weren't so hard to read.

Edit: this site doesn't like me trying to add several pictures for some reason.

Chris41586 · March 11

MikeBMW · March 11

I use an Autel Maxisys Elite but that is expensive.
I know not everyone will agree, but run it by the dealer and pay for a diagnostic.
It'll tell you a lot about what's going on.

Chris41586 · March 11

2 minutes ago, MikeBMW said:

I use an Autel Maxisys Elite but that is expensive.
I know not everyone will agree, but run it by the dealer and pay for a diagnostic.
It'll tell you a lot about what's going on.

At this point, I'm willing to pay to find out what's going on and fix it myself if it doesn't involve programming. With the SDGM thing, when I noticed it was messed with, I googled it to find out what it was. A bunch of stuff came up about recalls and info that makes me think it can be an issue, but I haven't been able to look into it much more. I spent half my day out there and gotta quite for the day, but definitely frustrating. I'll look up the tool you're talking about as well