Need help guys finding the grounds for these lights

88 xj 4.0 L, 6cyl auto trans

So far I have pulled the back panel off and i see a black wire with a screw holding it to the body of the jeep where the spare tire mounts
I was wondering if anyone knows the location of the grounds for the tail lights and or parking lights, etc..

I cant drive at night at all cause i'll get pulled over

also does anyone what chapter is for York, PA on this forum
I was hoping to find someone to help me with this I know every is raving that this is easy and just follow the lines but its hard for me! I don't understand

please guys run me through this thing its cold out here and I need my rig

thanks in advance

Hallo, Maybe usefull for you.

click 2 times on pic.for bigger pic.



wim

:banghead:

seriously, get yourself a manual... or search... there are at least half a dozen threads that list every single ground location.

Or bring it to a mechanic or the dealer.

York, PA would be in NAC...

ok i gonna search and see if i can find the ground locations the problem is I only have my haynes manual n that doesnt exactly show me where everything grounds Im not even sure if its as detailed as the FSM I have the FSM on my PC now but i cant print it out so reading it on the computer is not enough lol

ill do the search n see

also thanks for posting the diagram only problem i cant really make it big enough as i can see that it list where the ground are, If i could only read it, it would help lol
but ill have to try as i dont have shop money
does anyone know how much this could run me?

all of the exterior lights are switched power with constant ground. each bulb in the tail-light housing has its own wiring but the ground wires all meet in the bundle. start there and work backwards.

PA is the North Atlantic chapter

thanks

But you said you were blowing a fuse. This is not from a bad ground. This is from something that should not be grounded from grounding. That means the wire or a switch is making a ground before it gets to the lights. The body ground for the lights is not your problem.

Okay, I've been following your posts for a while.....

looking at the wiring diagrams, here is what I would suggest, pull out your dome light fuse and your hazard/stop light fuse, then put in a parking lamp fuse and see if it blows. If the fuse blows, then the problem is in the parking lamp circuit. If it doesn't blow then the problem is with the dome light or the hazard lamp flasher circuit.
Post your results and then we'll go from there.

disregard my other post....all power for the parking lights comes from the headlight switch.
Remove ALL the parking and turn signal lamps from their sockets, front and rear. Then see if the fuse blows. If it does, then the problem is in the wiring to the headlight switch or it is the switch itself. If it doesn't blow, then replace the bulbs one at a time to see if we can isolate where the short is.........if the fuse blows when you replace one of the bulbs, then we know which circuit has the problem.

being that you just said this I have some more info to add (this is specially for winterbeater and tugalo)

I remembered and a week or two back somewhere around right before i posted that my parking lamps fuse blows when i put a fuse in.
anyway i remember having a short in the OEM socket (not really sure if its the OEM but its the first one that i seen)
by short i mean everytime i seat the bulb completely while the front driver side turn signal is on the turn signal on the driver side would go out
thinking that i was fixing the problem I brought a GM socket from Advance auto parts they didnt have the right one for my car but the one i brought i told the guy it would definately fit because i could tell it looked exactly the same! the counter person said that i would need the bulb that goes for that socket cause mines would work which was a crock of shit because i tried my bulbs and they was able to get in the new socket.
Long story short i cut some extra wire off and attach it to the parking lights wires so they would reach outside the socket housing (it was only a little extra)
theni put on the new parking light socket and hook everything back up and the parkings lights came on fine I dont even know when they went out i didnt even know just didnt see them on any more after the 1st time

the socket info: the counter person told me he didnt have the right one for me but in one of the aisle's i found a socket from GM that looked just like mine i showed it to him and told him is he sure this isnt for my car cause i was sure it would fit and he said that it wasn't for my car, but if it would fit i would have to by a bulb for it and the bulb looked like mines except white with different numbers
so i brought the socket n bulb could it have been that?
maybe i got the wires mixed up would that caused the fuse to blow all the time?

thats just my parking lamps though im more worried about my tail lights because i need those to drive
today a mechanic looked at my tail lights
he was using my testing stuff so i dont know how accurate it was but here we go

testing the bottom red light which would be the tail lights right
we got no voltage from either tail light socket now i never heard of this but after not getting any DC voltage he decided to test it on amps and testing it on amps he was getting a reading on the right side of the back of the jeep almost on every light bulb socket on amps came up to about 5amps but not steady it would go from 3,4,5 and i told him to test the brake light for voltage while i step on the brake to see if we get a reading there problem was everytime he grounded the thing and test for power the damn brake light would go out until u released the pedal and applied it again
we even blew the stop light fuse doing this so what is it that made this happen

:banghead:

You are using the meter wrong, do NOT measure amps from ground to a random hot wire. If your mechanic does not know this you need to find a new mechanic who understands electronics somewhat or the problem will likely be made worse.

ok but i definitely didnt get any voltage to the sockets with DC so what does that indicate

You are confusing yourself:
the parking lights ARE your tail-lights. I believe that the Jeep light sockets are made by Ford, instead of GM.
The simplest thing to do at this point is to remove all the bulbs from all the sockets and see if the fuse still blows.....did you do that?

ill do that right now but i dont think that the parking lights are the tail lights are you sure! because if your right than all i have to do is focus on the blowing fuse
Im going right outside now to take all the lights out and try exactly what u said ill post back thanks for giving me something easy to try lol

tail lamp is the same circuit as the parking lamp-- it's the tail lamp in the rear of the vehicle, it's the parking lamp in the front. The circuit is designed to come on with the first detent on the headlamp switch and remain on with the second detent (headlights on).

One of the two contacts should receive power when the switch is in either detent and ground through the body of the socket back to the chassis. The second (other) contact in the same socket will receive power when the brake switch is actuated (push brake pedal) and will also ground through the socket to the chassis.

The ground locations (found on the link by Wim Hopp...toomanyletterstoremember) for these sockets are:
driver side socket-- behind spare tire mount on 1/4 panel support
passenger side socket-- under right front seat on seat reinforcement


P.S. if you open the link with the wiring diagrams and "zoom in" a few times, it's a clear enough resolution to view and read it at about the same size font as you would view this page. It just takes a couple "zoom-in's" to get there.

tugalo said:

You are confusing yourself:
the parking lights ARE your tail-lights. I believe that the Jeep light sockets are made by Ford, instead of GM.
The simplest thing to do at this point is to remove all the bulbs from all the sockets and see if the fuse still blows.....did you do that?

Click to expand...

question taking the back lights out i noticed 5 lights the first 2 im sure are the brake light and the parking lights/tail lights and there is a side marker tight next to the tail lights/paking and there are two more lights which ones am i taking out of the bottom two u dont want me to take the brake light out so i know take the nest one down after the brake is the parking/tail ill remove that but which one is the rear turn signal and if its the nest one whats the last light for and also do u want me to take out the side markers also or leave those

you want to remove ant lamp that has a red lens. There should be a side marker (remove it), a dual filament tail lamp/stop light (remove it), and some of the older ones had an additional single filament tail lamp (remove if equipped).

this would leave two bulbs in the lamp assembly-- one with a white lens (back up lamp) and one with an orange lens (turn signal)-- you should not be concerned with either of these.

!! all of this assumes you do not have Wagoneer "all red" lenses!!

my stop lights work

good-- but the second filament in that same socket powers the tail lamps. If you don't remove the bulb that is dual function, you're not eliminating any variables from the equation.

ok im getting confused i was told to remove the front and rear parking lights/runnings lights and the turn signals because they get power from the headlight switch

in the front i removed the the parking lights/which is the same as the turn signal lights
i also removed the side marker light

in the rear there were 5 bulbs
the one at the very top is red lens, under that is another red lens for the tail lights and under that is the side marker, under that is the yellow turn signal flasher, and under that is a yellow with a whit lens thats the last bulb
i didnt take out the top bulb and the bottom bulb but every other bulb i took out
so with that being said i put in a 15 amp fuse cause i ran out of 10's (now im outta 15's) lol
but i put the fuse in parking lps and the fuse blew soon as i turned the headlights on which are on permanant high beams by the way until i can fix the arm in the column (but thats another problem)
did the fuse blow because i was suppose to takeout brake lights? this is confusing