Heckuva time for this to happen :(. Elecrical crap.

So the electrical gremlins I hear people talking about have snuck up on my XJ. I have no dome lights. My stereo is dead. And while driving down the street my turn signals suddenly stopped working (bulbs are fine). It keeps blowing the red 10 amp fuse for the dome lights as soon as the new fuse makes contact. I don't know crap about electrical things, in fact wiring scares me.

And NAC Fest is 2 weeks away. :bawl:

I don't even know where to start. On top of all that I have 2 new 6.5" leaf packs & a bitching case of Poison Ivy, neither of which I want. But that's another 2 threads.

Does anyone know where I can take this thing for repair? South Jersey area ... can't drive too far without turn signals

:helpme:

I'm depressed.

check the wires for the tag lights.. my 90 kept doing the same thing.. stick a fuse is and POP!! i unplugged them back in the hatch and had not more problems

What year XJ?

Dome lights, gauges and stereo are on a fuse in the PDC under the hood, at least they are on my '99. I would check there.

She says she knows where the fuse(s) are -- 10a in the panel under the dash on the '92.

Have you done or had done any work of any sort recently or any traumatic events (hitting a giant pothole, etc.)?

I was going to say that fumes from the poison ivy lotion probably have gotten into the wiring but decided you might not think that was all that funny at this point.

Good luck!

Is there an aftermarket stereo in there? If so, I'd suspect the connections.

Don't know what the concern is - you trailer that thing up for NACFest, and you don't need turn signals on the trails.

Seriously, though, electrical troubleshooting is just troubleshooting. The steps are the same:

1. What was the last thing done to the rig before this all started?

2. If no recent mods in the electrical realm, what else has been done to the interior and door sill areas? Could you have pinched a wire somehow?


Here's a couple things to think about:

1. When I did my headliner swap and put in the 97+ dome lights, I discovered that the three-wire connectors on the later model dome lights were wired differently than the earlier ones. I discovered this by hooking the new light up as a test and discovering it wasn't lighting, which eventually led me to a blown dome light fuse. With the connectors rewired to match the truck, I was back in business.

2. Three years ago I swapped same-year power mirrors onto my truck. Built my own harness for them with some connectors salvaged from a part-out and a few minutes looking at the schematics in the FSM. They worked flawlessly, for all of about 3 months until I had a glass place rip the whole dashboard out to replace the HVAC box-cowl gasket. When they reinstalled the carpet, which had been pulled to investigate the leak that led them to that gasket, they inadvertently pinched a couple of the wires in my mirror harness (this was two days before I set out for Moab in 2008). Finally had a chance to look into this back on Sunday while dealing with the new under-carpet padding, and found/fixed the problem.

So, that brings us to the following:

- Does the fuse still blow if you "disable" the dome lights (either remove all the bulbs or just take them completely out of the truck so that the circuit is incomplete)?

- Have you been tinkering around behind the dashboard or down in the kick panels recently? What about up by the bulkhead connector on the firewall?


Let us know if the above turns out to be of any help.

Okay - let's see now: the dome lights have been out since I did the headliner Rob - Summer of last year I think. The OHC isn't sitting up there fully, but since the damn HL started sagging the day I put it in, I figured I would just wait until I re-did it to see where I messed up. But everything else worked. In addition, when I stripped the interior after flooding the XJ I never hooked the sub back up - no tunes for a year. Me being a wiring ignoramus I had the wiring checked last week because I'm ready for my tunes. A-OK. That's when we discovered that the stereo was dead. I did not have them touch the stereo or anything but the sub because we figured it might just be a fuse. A few days later after installing my leafs, on the way home the turn signals quit.

And here we are ...

Gecko321 said:

check the wires for the tag lights.. my 90 kept doing the same thing.. stick a fuse is and POP!! i unplugged them back in the hatch and had not more problems

Click to expand...

You mean the license plate lights?

If you have illuminated vanity mirrors in the visor(s), make sure the wires are not pinched at the mounting point. Just loosen the three screws to check.

Ok, sounds like the only two changes between when things did work and when things started going wierd are the reconnection of the sub and the new leaves.

I wouldn't have expected either of those to cause the problem, but what sort of connection is used for the sub? A connector, or bare wires in screw terminals? Any possibility that the sub's been connected wrong?

The turn signals' wiring is pretty well protected inside the cabin (under the dash, inside what looks like plastic conduit along the sides, and inside the body panels in the cargo area). That being said, since you pulled out the interior post-flood, there's a chance you might have pinched something putting it all back in.

Rob Mayercik said:

Ok, sounds like the only two changes between when things did work and when things started going wierd are the reconnection of the sub and the new leaves.

I wouldn't have expected either of those to cause the problem, but what sort of connection is used for the sub? A connector, or bare wires in screw terminals? (bare wires. And I did check since this trouble. It all looks okay) Any possibility that the sub's been connected wrong? (I doubt it. That is exactly what I went to Best Buy to have checked because I don't trust me. I watched the guy - besides the turns worked for days following the sub check)

The turn signals' wiring is pretty well protected inside the cabin (under the dash, inside what looks like plastic conduit along the sides, and inside the body panels in the cargo area). That being said, since you pulled out the interior post-flood, there's a chance you might have pinched something putting it all back in. (But Rob it has all been put back together sice last year. Would it just now start failing?)

Click to expand...

Pelican I'll check those - and the whole OHC thing.

If the sub's not connected those bare wires ought to be wrapped in tape so there's no chance of inadvertent connections to the body or other wires.

It is possible that something could take a while to fail after the "incident" occurs - I have to take an annual ESD (electrostatic discharge) test for my job, and the most troublesome sort of failure (read: most expensive to fix) is the one where a part gets "zapped" during assembly but doesn't fail until long after it's in the customer's hands. So in my mind it's conceivable that something's taken a while to rub through.

That said, what if the turn signals are unrelated to the other problem? Is it possible the turn signal switch or the flasher module just up and died? Do the hazard lights work?

As to the dome lights, there must be something wrong in that circuit - when did it start blowing that fuse? Just recently?

mine did this sometimes after I installed a CD player...

you might consider a slightly larger fuse... or putting the radio on another line

Mine did the same thing, wouldn't hold a fuse and I found a bad ground in the wiring going out the rear hatch. At the upper part you'll find a rubber boot. I took the trim off and started tracing the wires. It took forever to find it. GL

Rob I suspect that the dome prolly blew the fuse as soon as I re-installed it. It's never worked after treupholstered the OHC. Fuse never occurred to me (yup, rank amateur!) and I'm pretty sure that part is/was my fault. I can't say if the rest is related or not.
ericfx - If I put the radio on another line no one will remember if there's a problem down the road ... could complicate things ...

I'm gonna have someone I know take a look tomorrow & hopefully he can track it down.

At this rate if we can't put a finger on it I just might opt out of NacFest. No-one would like me very much if the jeep died or had some catastrophic electrical failure on snakebite ... trailer's no good if you can't get the Jeep to it, LOL. Keeping my fingers crossed. This is what I get for feeling smug in the past whenever I read any of those "electric gremlins" threads.

gradon said:

Is there an aftermarket stereo in there? If so, I'd suspect the connections.

Click to expand...

Sorry, didn't mean to ignore you ... there is an aftermarket stereo in there - for the past 8, 9 years. I suppose something could have worked loose. But going behind the dash is way too intimidating for me. Let the experts at it tomorrow, lol.

if you don't get a solution by NAC fest bring it up to the campsite and I will take a look at it. I am an aircraft electrician by trade so I am sure I could figure it out.

I really 'preciate the offer dude. I'd hate to have guys spend party-time messing with my heep in a non-emergecy situation, but we'll se how it plays out. As long as there's no chance that it will randomly shut off in mid-drive or burn itself down, it'll be on that trailer in a couple weeks.

Mighty.Mighty_XJ said:

Rob I suspect that the dome prolly blew the fuse as soon as I re-installed it. It's never worked after treupholstered the OHC. Fuse never occurred to me (yup, rank amateur!) and I'm pretty sure that part is/was my fault. I can't say if the rest is related or not.

Click to expand...

Sounds like a short in the dome circuit - maybe you pinched something in the wires in the process of doing the OHC.

I'll make sure I bring my FSM along to the 'Fest (since my rig's a 92 as well, it'll match your truck too).

ding, ding, DING! Winnar!!
You nailed it Rob - that's what he found. The dome light switch had shorted out - he pulled it down & it's pretty melted up there. So it seems I did mess something up when I re-installed the headliner. He said that it was a good thing the circuit is fused or things could have got ugly.

See, that's why I don't like messing with wires. I'd rather tackle an axle swap single-handedly than mess with any type of electrical wiring.
Anyway, the turns are now working and I even have tunes. Something was bridged somewhere else that it should not have been too, but I think that was stereo related. Can't remember if he said it was all connected ...

Okay now ... on to the next episode. My poison ivy is coming along nicely, thanks for asking . I can even wear pants now ...
















oh wait ...