Western Star Gauge Problem-This is Bizarre!

Do you know, all vehicles over the past many years use " smart wiring", which basically means one wire ( set of) jumps from one guage to the next, to the next and so on.
Guage now read pulse width, multiple signals sent in one wire. Like 10 trucks driving on the same road, bumper to bumper. Each has different freight, each will deliver their goods to different customers, but share the same highway.

 

Correct. It is called "daisy chain" wiring.

 

Is there anyway for the average person to diagnose troubles with this kind of system? Using a multi meter? I'm guessing not.

 

You can do some stuff with a meter on a J1939 multiplex system (assuming that's what your truck is using). Continuity pin to pin in the harness, check terminating resistors. J1939 should read close to 60 ohms when checking between the 2 wires (key off). Each resistor should read about 120 ohms individually (two 120 ohm resistors in parallel equal 60 ohms).

Here's a handy little guide for basic checks on J1939. An older truck would use J1587 and it's diagnosed differently.

CAN-Bus Troubleshooting Guide

 

A few years ago, the very first time I had climbed in to a western star truck, the fuel gelled up on be in a bad blow, 60 miles short of Prudhoe bay. We finally got it running 2 days later, but it had no gauges whatsoever, including speedo and tach. I finally told the guy that had given me a ride back, to lets just go.
Drove it back the 450 miles back with never a gauge even attempting to work. The owner laughed and said I will show what is wrong, he told me it will be this fuse right here and it will not be blown, just remove it and put it back in , it is a western star thing, and it was and everything worked. I can not remember which fuse it was, but he had several stars and obviously had had the same trouble before.

 

Hello Cummins fanboy, do you happen to have the electrical schematic for a 2010 western star DD13 for the RX module?

 

HI I HAVE SAME PROBLEM 03 WS SA 4900 ANY WAY TO GET FUSE # AND LOCATION THANKS

 

WoW this seem like the Perfect thread to get assistance with my gauge problem as similar to others!!
randomly, my gauges will not work.. ONLY the speedo backlight comes on.
This only seems to happen at startup.
no gauge sweep, no reading from any gauges including the odometer and datastar all nothing!
this is a 2017 4700 day cab Dump truck.
I'm all ears and tools ready...

 

Hello every body I have a1998 Western star dump truck that loss all gauges the only thing on it the dash is the back light and total hours and total miles no gauge is working any suggestions or diagrams will be a great help