fog light wiring help

I’m on a rampage trying to fix all electrical problems with my newly acquired ’89 XJ Limited. It came with fog lights, however, the previous owner said they never worked for him, and he was the second owner.

The lamps themselves are all rusted out, so I replaced them with some cheapo aftermarket ones. When I pulled the lights off, I tested the wires to see if I was getting power to them. Even with the headlights on, car running, and fog light switch on and glowing, there is no juice.

Fusible link appears okay, and I can’t find any other fuse in the kick panel. The weird thing is that the light on the fog light switch DOES glow.

Each fog has 2 wires...a black and a black/white stripe. Which one is ground? Doing a continuity test, both wires seem to be grounded. Does thins mean a short somewhere?

Any suggestions on what else to check?

Did you check the switch and see if all the wires are connected? The switch could have power but the wire to the lights may be broken or missing. Or you could have a bad relay.

My fog light fuse in my 93 was in the engine compartment fuse box.

Don't know if that helps or not, sorry.

Black is ground, white is power to the lights.

When you had the headlights on, are you certain they were on low beam? The factory wiring had to comply with legal standards, and the fogs could not be on with high beams.

The relay should be mounted to the driver's side radiator frame, just ahead of the air box. If you have power to the switch, the next step is to confirm that you have power to the relay, and then that you have power FROM the relay. On my '88 MJ, the aux fan relay, which is located in the same vicinity, was so badly corroded that when I tried to work on it one of the terminals just fell off. I had to snip all the wires and use crimp terminals to wire in a new relay. You have have a similar problem with the fog light relay.

hey guys,

sorry, but i might be doubling up on posts. thanks to everyone's suggestions, i tracked down the problem. turns out it was the relay. i replaced it with a spare bosch 12v/20/30A one, and they came on with the low beams.

woohoo!

thanks again everyone....