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Help...electrical issue

Musser717

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So tonight I (at least I thought) finished the installed of a AMP Powerstep xl. I’m fairly certain I tapped into the correct wires with posi tap for the doors. I put in the fuses the red 40 kind of sparked when I put it in, the steps retracted now hardly anything works.

It does not recognize when the doors are open, the steps or the jeep itself. No lights come on when the doors are open, however if I manually press the button they come on. There are a few lights that do show, shifter lights, illumination around USB ports, and the splash screen comes up and says the brake pedal and push the button message. When I do that nothing happens at all, not even a noise. Occasionally the radio splash screen comes up but turns off.

I’ve removed the fuses from the steps harness, checked several fuses, removed the posi taps just in case that was doing something, ensured all 3 harnesses were snapped back in securely.

Those 4 posi taps were the only electrical things I touched on the jeep.

Help please!
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tbaker

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I had a shop install my XL power steps and they do electrical stuff all the time and they told me if they knew what they know now they wouldn’t have done the job they said you have to be really careful on the wires lot of them are the same color I thought it was just plug and play but not on the gladiator
 

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Without knowing exactly which wire you tapped into, and having a wiring diagram - I doubt anyone is going to be able to figure out why things didn't work out.
There are so many systems associated with CAN bus/OBD II and like said - even in the 90s you could have 4 blue wires - some with pink traces, some with orange traces, some with red traces, some brown, you name it and unless you looked VERY VERY close - some of those would look like others. It's not easy even with good eyes for color to determine lt blue with orange from blue with red (just as examples)
I have done auto-electric since the 70s, and for the last few decades it's been my specialty - but I'd not even venture a guess without great close-up photos and a diagram of which wires are for what on the JT (and here I build small wiring harnesses for things - I have put Jeep PDC and PCM and associated harnesses in cars)

Anyone who attempts to help out is going to need a good pic of exactly which wires you tapped into - so you might want to get a detailed photo or two ready, so they can maybe see what happened. Otherwise they may be guessing and that will only frustrate..........
 
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Musser717

Musser717

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Without knowing exactly which wire you tapped into, and having a wiring diagram - I doubt anyone is going to be able to figure out why things didn't work out.
There are so many systems associated with CAN bus/OBD II and like said - even in the 90s you could have 4 blue wires - some with pink traces, some with orange traces, some with red traces, some brown, you name it and unless you looked VERY VERY close - some of those would look like others. It's not easy even with good eyes for color to determine lt blue with orange from blue with red (just as examples)
I have done auto-electric since the 70s, and for the last few decades it's been my specialty - but I'd not even venture a guess without great close-up photos and a diagram of which wires are for what on the JT (and here I build small wiring harnesses for things - I have put Jeep PDC and PCM and associated harnesses in cars)

Anyone who attempts to help out is going to need a good pic of exactly which wires you tapped into - so you might want to get a detailed photo or two ready, so they can maybe see what happened. Otherwise they may be guessing and that will only frustrate..........

Here are the pictures requested. These are the only 4 wires tapped. I do see in the picture with 2 taps I may have tapped the wrong violet.

Voilet
Voilet white
Voilet yellow
Violet gray

These are what the instructions call for. These plugs are plugged into a white panel in the passenger foot well.

I currently have both battery disconnected.

Thank you for the reply, let me know if you need anything additional.
IMG_20191214_122355.jpg
IMG_20191214_122259.jpg
IMG_20191214_122146.jpg
 
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Musser717

Musser717

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Ok so I think I figured at least out why it happened initially, doesn’t appear to be the taps.

I’m probably gonna get roasted for this but I need a solution. When installing I hooked up the ground to the negative terminal :facepalm:.

I’ve been testing the fuses but can’t turn the acc on to test more of them. I’m guessing I blew a fuse somewhere but haven’t a clue which one to look at.
 

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AggieJeep

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Ok so I think I figured at least out why it happened initially, doesn’t appear to be the taps.

I’m probably gonna get roasted for this but I need a solution. When installing I hooked up the ground to the negative terminal :facepalm:.

I’ve been testing the fuses but can’t turn the acc on to test more of them. I’m guessing I blew a fuse somewhere but haven’t a clue which one to look at.
‘Generally, the ground would be the negative battery terminal. There still isn’t enough information to give a definitive solution. Many wires may have + and - designations. Those are not necessarily battery ground and hot. These symbols also indicate differential signals.

I suggest disconnecting the AMP wiring completely and disconnecting the batteries to get all the modules reset. Then reconnect the batteries and leave the AMP wires unconnected. This should clear any confused modules that could be throwing bad messages on the CANBUS impacting initialization.

Get back to the starting point without any AMP stuff.
 

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‘Generally, the ground would be the negative battery terminal. There still isn’t enough information to give a definitive solution. Many wires may have + and - designations. Those are not necessarily battery ground and hot. These symbols also indicate differential signals.

I suggest disconnecting the AMP wiring completely and disconnecting the batteries to get all the modules reset. Then reconnect the batteries and leave the AMP wires unconnected. This should clear any confused modules that could be throwing bad messages on the CANBUS impacting initialization.

Get back to the starting point without any AMP stuff.
Agree completely - start over - reset things. Keep in mind you have to disconnect both batteries as the one hardest to get at is the one that powers much if not all of the electronics when the engine is off during those auto-shutoff/auto-start events.
So be sure to follow the directions to get both batteries disconnected and give it a bit for things to reset.

As AggieJeep has said - with modern electronics and definitely with any computer system going back to the original PC and Apple devices, + and - can be different - just for example you may have a +5 volts and a -5 volts with these things and neither refer to the battery terminals.
The PCM will have different + and - pins that have nothing to do with the old-fashioned + and - of the battery - so be alert, be careful. You're getting good advice.
 
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Musser717

Musser717

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Ok so I disconnected both batteries, left them unplugged for at least an hour. Got everything back together and still the same issues. AMP wires are completely disconnected and were when I put everything back together.

Some lights work when I press to turn them on, odometer splash works, shifter lights and USB lights. USB c charger works.

What's the next step?

I appreciate your guys help
 

Commodus

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Ok so I disconnected both batteries, left them unplugged for at least an hour. Got everything back together and still the same issues. AMP wires are completely disconnected and were when I put everything back together.

Some lights work when I press to turn them on, odometer splash works, shifter lights and USB lights. USB c charger works.

What's the next step?

I appreciate your guys help
Was the vehicle running when you installed the fuse and it sparked? If so there is a good chance you blew the ECM.
 

ShadowsPapa

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Ok so I disconnected both batteries, left them unplugged for at least an hour. Got everything back together and still the same issues. AMP wires are completely disconnected and were when I put everything back together.

Some lights work when I press to turn them on, odometer splash works, shifter lights and USB lights. USB c charger works.

What's the next step?

I appreciate your guys help
I am simply inserting a comment here - not necessarily going to help fix your current troubles, but on the other hand..... from what I've seen, who knows.
Anyway, I HATE WIRE TAPS. Period. I hate them. I will never use them on anything. I will never poke anything into a wire, or crimp something over a wire to "tap" into it (like the old ScotchLocks do) and I won't use a test light with a probe to poke into the insulation to poke into the wire to test.
When you poke into wires you necessarily break the insulation and add an opening for oxygen and humidity. That leads to oxidized copper and future failure of the wires.
And if you poke into the CAN bus wires, often a wire that has a specific twist to it as there's a spec for network cable and wire, a specific number of twists per foot and so on - anyway, you can introduce interference into the wires. They are high-speed network communications connections, not power connections.
If it's a power wire and not a network wire, it's not critical as far as the twist - but I'll still make hard sealed connections instead of the taps. If I have to make a T or Y connection I use a form of seal that sticks to itself with no adhesive and then use liquid tape over that, otherwise I use heat shrink tubing over wires physically joined and soldered, then sealed over with a liquid tape if I don't use a heat shrink that has a sealer made into it.

In this case hopefully they are using non-network wire connections - I don't know what these are supposed to connect to, how they get power or what they sense from to trigger the lowering and retracting with the door opening and closing.

I know that doesn't help this situation and doesn't lead to any sort of solution or aid in troubleshooting.
Many wires in vehicles since OBD II came along (anything after about 1996) are very sensitive and shouldn't be cut, poked, spliced and so on.

Carry on and good luck. That was just my commentary on wires and connections since that is what I do most of these days.
 

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TrailHiker

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Your best bet,most tomtake the JT backmto the dealer to sort. Lesson learned, do not tap your wires. :headbang:
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Thank you for posting this, I installed a set of AMP steps on my JK Wrangler, I remember having a lot of angst when I saw the wires were so close in color. My install turned out great, and I will be putting another set on my JT 3.0L.
It might help others if you renamed this thread w/ a reference to electric step wiring or such.
Good luck w/ your issue!
 

AggieJeep

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FWIW, I downloaded what I think are the instructions for your steps out of curiosity. It would seem to me your first pic indicates you tapped a purple / white wire rather than violet / gray in the white connector bundle. As others have stated, colors can be challenging. The photos are good but colors can be off sometimes.

the labeling for the door sensing wires would indicate these are simple voltage sense circuits, one wire per door. This is a best guess due to single-ended / 1-wire digital communications are not a sound practice in this rather exposed mobile application. The AMP module should not impact those 4 circuits, just monitor them door open/closed states.

I am also not a fan of the posi-locks due to the damage they cause to the wires. I would much prefer to see AMP build a harness / adaptor that leaves the factory wiring alone. Simply unplug the connector, insert adaptor and reconnect. The adaptor would have the wires needed neatly split off.

I have yet to find a service manual or online resource for the JT. So this is all best-guess and I don’t have diagrams to see what other circuits are in the bundles to suggest what other circuits in that bundle should be checked.

‘Good luck. I hope you stumble across a bad fuse, otherwise this may require a tow into service.
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