Electrical problem

[Slojoe72]

just bought a 1999 holiday rambler imperial 40' with a cummins 350hp. 37,000 miles and has been sitting for a couple years. On the ride home I noticed when turning the headlights on the guages flicker and the coolant temp went 1/4 higher. At first I thought it was running hot, so we stopped to check out. Everything in back was good... Fired it up again and noticed temp was normal (head lights off). Started driving again and saw when turning on headlight the guage would go from straight up normal to just before the red when turning lights on.
That's the first thing I noticed.....
Day two the next morning had a hard time cranking very cold 25 degrees. Sounded like low voltage, cranked slow starter clicked a few times and cranked slow again. Put a battery charger on it and it started right up.
Day 3 thinking I had a battery issue ... Brought home a battery tester. Both 1000cca batteries checked good 1006 and 1056. Started up and it seemed to still crank over very slow but started (Warmer out 40 degrees). But while it was idling the guage rpms were like 2500rpms but the engine was at normal high idle 1000 rpm ish. Also mph guage was sitting at 15 mph. Kinda sounds related problems .......


Turned off and said F it. Any ideas where yo start looking??
Thanks in advance.


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[Artum_Snowbird]

Your gauges will have a neutral wire somewhere. The positive line goes out to the sensor, back to the gauge, then it returns to battery negative.

I would look for a place where the negatives for the gauges is, then try running a good solid wire from battery negative to that point.

Often what happens when the neutral wire comes loose is the current can't return on the regular negative wire, and instead finds it's way through another panel gauge and goes back through a different path to battery negative.