Alright, I've noticed the light flickering running through the forest at night for months now, and watched the temp gauge dance with the left turn signal since I bought the truck, but today, I was driving home and hit a snow squall & turned my headlights on. When I got to the other side, I glanced down at the speedo, and was surprised to see my temp gauge climbing right along with the gas gauge (had a half tank, but the gauge showed way over full & the temp gauge was maxed)!! Turned the lights off & both dropped back to normal. Turned them back on & within a few minutes, they were raising again. and so on (actually got amused & tried it several times with the same with the same result). The volts & temp on the Ultragauge never reflected this, and the vehicle ran the same all the way through this. has anyone ever experienced this? Could this possibly be the light/turn signal stalk causing this?

 

I had similar, clean all grounds at battery, I added a ground from batt to rad support and engine to batt

These helped, it is a ground issue imo

 

Wow, I would have never thought that could be caused by a ground. So, you are saying run an additional ground wire from the Battery to the radiator support & another from the battery to the engine, and leave the stalk alone, right?

 

You can test this very good idea with a battery jumper cable from negative terminal to block or frame.

 

Will do!! But I have a quick question before I do. I leave the original ground to the frame intact when I use the jumper cable? This is a secondary ground, right?

 

Tried the jumper cable and cleaning grounds, wires etc. which didn't help on mine. I did notice at higher speeds the problem went away. I then tried running without the belt (only a short time) and the flicker went away too. I ended up replacing the Alternator which fixed it.

Does sound like a bad ground for the gauges to act up like that.

 

Well, now that you mention it, I had the flickering & bouncing temp gauge for a while, but I didn't have the pegged gauges till after I replaced the battery & alternator. But it just seems it would do this with or without the lights on.

 

I did see the gauges drop out once or twice, driving at 65 MPH, but then it quit. Have not seen it since that day, Same day my brake light switch failed. Had a fun time getting out of park when that happened. (This was with the lights off.)

 

Update.... Okay, checked the ground, and added a ground wire to the radiator mounting bracket with no difference (lights still flicker, gauges still rise when I turn on the lights, and the volts drop to 11.5ish). However, I noticed something even more strange last night & this morning. If I start the LR and drive with the lights on for about 3 miles & turn it off for about 5 minutes and start it again, the lights don't flicker, the gauges are steady, and the UltraGauge volts run at about 13.3 consistently. Ideas?