Fog Lights... Plug and play??

Hey everyone. So someone decided to back into my 1999 xj and just run off. Guess they thought it was no big deal. So I not have to replace the front bumper, grill, headlights, air conditioner radiator, and radiator. I noticed while I was pulling everything apart that there appears to be plugs already in place for the fog lights. I decided to pull the panel where the blank spot is that would be the fog light toggle switch. The wiring is there and it has power to the orange wire when the lights are on. If I was to head done to my local junk yard and grab a front bumper with fog lights on it along with the toggle switch for the dash, could I plug them in and have them work? Has any one else done this? What else would I need? Seams like to waste to have everything all wired up, but never use it. I know that cruise control is basically a pnp set up, hoping that fog lights would be the same way. Thanks Everyone!

This is for the 99 without daytime running lights.


gratis bilder

okay, so grab the relay in the fuse box under the hood too.

Many times they tend to stick with a mostly universal harness, but sometimes they skimp and save in places you wouldn't expect. The socket in the PDC may be blank and have no contacts for the relay, it happens sometimes on older models. Or maybe an intermediate harness without a needed connection and the wires cut taped and stuffed inside the harness jacket.

You can get the switch and the relay and hope to get lucky or you can ohm the appropriate wiring and see if it is complete and will work without having to chase down (find and install) the missing sections, if there are any.

I tend to stick with OEM wiring when available, adding a relay and wiring in your fog lights with the OEM switch shouldn't be that big of a deal if the necessary bits and pieces aren't already there.

I think that orange wire is your, dimmer controlled, instrument, radio, ashtray etc, lighting circuit. I could be wrong, dim everything down and see if the voltage at the orange wire falls as the lighting dims.

Typically the fog lights are not a plug and play item on the XJ's. Usually what is missing is all the wiring from C102 forward (Basically all the under hood wiring.) However the wires are the correct colors on that plug for the fog harness. It's possible your XJ had Fogs at one time, and was repaired with non fog pieces... You'll need to check the PDC for the relays, and/or the terminals for the relays. If you do have the terminals I'm going to say all the rest of the (hard part) wiring is there, and it should be pretty simple to add them on.

Where exactly is that plug located (It's kinda hard to tell on the close up pic there)? FWIW the plug in the center of the front cross member is for the temp sensor on the overhead console...

Scooby is correct, 97-01 for lamps are not plug and play, portions of the wire harness and the relay sockets are not installed on non factory fog light XJ's.

The simple solution is to use a factory switch to trigger a fog light relay and wires that you install yourself.

If your car didn't come with the factory fog switch then you'll need the entire switch
panel that came with the fog switch. You cannot just cut out the blank and pop in a
factory switch as the mounting tabs are very specific to each other.

If your car does have the factory fog switch, then your car probably came with the
factory fog light wire harness (at the front of the car) and are good to go for plug and
play. To be absolutely certain you'll need to check one more thing...

... check the headlight wire harness connector that is on the inner fender, just below
the factory air box intake snout. See whether if there are the same number of wires
on either side of the connector. If not, then you do not have the factory wire harness
for fog lights. If so, then you are almost certainly good to go for plug and play.

Incidentally, the fog light relay in the Power Distribution Center is not for switching on
the fog lights. It is for switching the fogs off when the headlight high beams are used.

Okay, first off, thanks everyone for so much good info. I looked in the Power Distribution Center under the hood and the relay socket labeled fog lamps has no wiring in it at all. I was able to acquire a set of fog lamps from my local junk yard though. Some one had already taken the panel with the fog lamp toggle, but I still think I can make it work. I shall keep everyone posted on how everything works out.

Hey everyone, sorry it has taken so long for me to post anything on this.

So here is what I ended up doing. Behind where the fog light switch should be, there is a wiring harness. It is just clipped into a dummy connector. The orange wire becomes hot when the parking lights are turned on. I tapped into that orange wire and ran one side to a rocker style toggle switch. I ran the other side down out of the Jeep and placed it where the new fog lights were supposed to go. Here is the image, the right side harness, orange wire is what I used.



Behind the bumper, I bolted a starter solenoid behind the vacuum ball and attached the long lead from the toggle to the small prong on the solenoid. From the battery I ran a cable from the positive side and attached it to the heavy lug on the solenoid. The other lug I wired both fog lights to and used the bolts where the lights attach for the ground.



I bolted the bumper back on and tested everything out, and it works well. The fog lights turn on and off with a distinct popping of the solenoid firing into the on position. The fog lights come on only with the parking lights, and can be independently controlled as long as at least the parking lights are on. I also will not forget to turn them off this way as they are off with the regular lights on my jeep.

Why a starter solenoid?

RockTracXJ said:

Why a starter solenoid?

Click to expand...

why not? They are easy to use, handle tons of power and are rather inexpensive.

I'll have to keep those in mind. Given that they do handle tons of power, do you have some sort of fuse upstream?

The orange wire behind the dash is on a 5 amp fuse already. I know that because I accidentally shorted it out. I used an inline 40amp fuse I had from an subwoofer amp install I did for my cousin a while back for the wire that comes off the battery.