Posted these quick from my phone from the garage earlier it tends to randomly shut down from the cold, so editing for commentary now.

So the first thing that I ended up changing my mind about this weekend was where I changed my mind earlier about using the Blue Sea power distribution/fuse block. This is tied to the second thing I changed my mind about and I am not going to pull the heater box, and now the distribution block is mounted on the front of the heater box (remember, mine is right-hand drive, so mirrored box).

That meant that I had to sort out how to feed power to the dist block. Getting clean power back into the cab was one of the things that made me keep the XJ PDC, so I decided to repurpose the radiator cooling fan relay circuit that has a monster 40A fuse and 10GA wire. After scratching my head for a while as to why I couldn't get the relay to trigger properly, I realized it was looking for a ground, not 12V and now I have it wired into my distribution block and that's powering the gauges. The only issue is that the power feed for the circuit is hot run vs. hot run/start, so that causes the gauges to cycle through the power-on sequence twice every startup. Once when you hit the run position, then they cut off when you go to start, then again when back to run.
Only acceptable option there (given my mission is to clean up the wiring and finally "do it right" is to open up the PDC and change the relay input out. May come to that, but not right now.

Wow, this is a horrible picture of the installed dist block with the first circuit for the gauges. This will get filled up more when I move into the switch plate. I CAN'T WAIT to get rid of the random inline fuses and wiring connections, especially at the battery.

And the final result!
My tcase 4x4 switch plug was screwed when I got the Jeep and I just cut it out. Tonight I soldered on a new wire and crimped on a temporary connector that I forced onto the terminal to see if I could get the 4x4 light working. It didn't work with the shifters, but I checked it on a ground and it's fine, so either I need a better ground to the tcase or the switch is shot.
High beam works and I think the fuel gauge needs calibrated because I'm pretty sure I filled it when I dropped in the Stabil before it got parked for the winter.
I have the oddball in-dash warning light for the ebrake which has always worked, but when I took out the stock speedo, there was wiring and lamp for the ebrake warning light, but it had never worked. Checked and that ground isn't connected to the ebrake switch, so I cut/spliced/soldered a jumper into the dash light and got the in-speedo ebrake light working as well.
In the end, I wired the multi-gauge inverter for the face illumination to the feed from the stock dimmer so that the faces dim with the stock dimmer, then I can tweak the brightness with the Speedhut dimmer on the inverter. Works out perfectly and looks like I'll be setting the faces just short of full-on.
I was worried about how visible the white needles would be on the faces at night, but they're awesome and now I'm SO glad I talked myself into it even though I was concerned about them.
Next up: drilling holes for tach and clock along with the 12V and USB plugs. Can't wait for my pressure and trans temp gauges to come in!
