electric issues

Question: put a new headunit in last weekend. it worked. everything worked. then about an hour later my interior lights went out. then i started up the jeep and the dash gauges went out, the lights in gauge cluster still work but gauges done. checked every fuse. they are good. thinking a short somewhere. found one loose ground wire. fixed that. even removed headunit and still the interior lights and gauge cluster wont work.

has anyone experienced this before or does anyone have any ideas. at this point we are pretty stumped. its a 97 TJ for reference.

Thanks. Went over vehicle twice with a tester and nothing. Started pulling fuses under hood and they all were good but upon checking a small 10A fuse stuck next to relays in fuse box under hood it ended up having such a small crack in it that it finally proved to be the issue. What a pain Thanks for the input guys.

Quote from astape

Thats the iod fuse .

so it seems as though that even after that fuse is replaced there is still smoke appearing under the dash on passenger side right by airbag. running a lot of different tests currently trying to eliminate and narrow down what could be the cause of the smoke and what has been wired improperly.

if anyone wants to drop some knowledge please do.

Quote from JKgray10

^ What he said. I'm no electrician..yet but electrical issues are the worst. I'm still in the process of visually inspecting all my wiring, cutting out bad connection or dead connections and fixing areas that are fubar. Moral of that story...take your time to do what Aaron said and good luck...

Thats basically where we are at now. I am getting sent a new head unit bc i think there was a internal issue with head unit (1). but (2) with radio on there was crackling in passenger dash speaker then smoke would appear. Hoping that may be part of the issue but never had a problem with the previous head unit and speakers crackling.