Power door swap dash wiring question?

Okay, here it goes.

I have a 90 XJ 4.0 manual everything. I bought an 89 XJ for $350 power everything minus the motor because it was seized. I took the doors with power windows and locks off of the 89 and put them on my 90. Because they were different colors I thought, what the hell, lets paint the 90 so everything will match. Now its painted a lovely Porsche red and looking good. When the paint dried and it was safe to work on, I decided to start to hook up all the wiring. Well, low and behold, the current wiring harness under the dash of the 90 doesnt have the proper connections to power the doors. So I am currently driving around an XJ that wont allow me to roll down its windows. I have started working on removing the wiring harness from the 89 to install on my 90.

Before I get too far, is this doable? Will the wiring harness swap from the 89 to the 90 without having to modify any wiring? If it is just plug and play, I can handle that. But anything past that I will probably struggle with. Also, the 89 is an automatic and it has a tranny comp. My 90 is manual. When I swap everything, will that need to be hooked up even though it wont be controlling anything, or can I leave it unhooked. I also believe I may be having some issues with the main comp. in my 90 so I was thinking about trying out the comp. from the 89. Good idea? Bad idea? Any and all help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance guys.

90red

if it was my Jeep, I would go back to manual, you could monkey wire the switch to the fuse box by seperate wire with in line fuse for power, if you start changing the wire harness you will open up a can of worms you wish you never saw, broken leads, wires that break, missing links, it'll be an electric nightmare.

I was wondering if that was an option. There are a whole bunch of wires coming out of those doors, would it really be that much easier to wire them myself than to change the harness? And can I make the driver door control the rest of the doors? Thanks.

90red

I have done this swap so I know a thing or two about the harness. You need to pull up the front carpet of the donor XJ and retrive the harness that goes across the floor. Remember where the connections go and it's a plug and play. It is however a real PITA if you don't use the floor harness.

Is the floor harness the only one I need, or is that along with the dash harness? If it is the only one I need that would be great. Thanks again for all your help guys.

90red

Is the electric mirror wiring included in all harnesses that have the power door options?

This jeep did not come with electric mirrors. They are adjusted with a knob inside the cab.

90red

Okay, I pulled the floor harness out of the donor XJ today. I have not yet looked to see if they match up with any connections under the dash of my daily driver. But I did come to the realization that that harness will enable me to wire them properly to the driver door and I think I will only need to supply a power source. If thats the case, it shouldnt be too bad. I will update as soon as I get done or or get fed up with my jeep and blow it up. One way or the other, I will tell you guys how it went. Thanks for all the help. And please keep submitting advice or hints or anything else that might help.

90red

90red said:

Okay, I pulled the floor harness out of the donor XJ today. I have not yet looked to see if they match up with any connections under the dash of my daily driver. But I did come to the realization that that harness will enable me to wire them properly to the driver door and I think I will only need to supply a power source. If thats the case, it shouldnt be too bad. I will update as soon as I get done or or get fed up with my jeep and blow it up. One way or the other, I will tell you guys how it went. Thanks for all the help. And please keep submitting advice or hints or anything else that might help.

90red

Click to expand...

After you plug the under floor harness to the doors you only need to get a good ground and the power wire "should" plug right into an enpty 1 hole spot in the fuse panel.

Okay, I plugged everything up and nothing. All connections are connected except for 2 and I think they are for a keyless entry. There are also some 1 and 2 wire connectors with black and w/black wires that are unconnected which I believe are ground. I have tried to ground them and I still get nothing. When I disconnected the power source from the donor XJ, the 30 amp fuse pulled out with the power wire and I am not sure how the 2 connected (hard to explain). There are also 3 wires from the left rear door that I had to cut in order to get the harness that ran under the plastic molding out up to the driver kick panel. The wires are red, brown, and green. All three of those wires ran from the white connector that connected to the harness that came out of the door back into the tape wrapped harness and toward the back of the vehicle. I know this sounds very confusing, probably because I am very confused right now. I am very bad with electrical problems. Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

90red

I would think you have either a power or ground problem if you have connected the plugs all together. When I did my swap the power wire was red and had a square termination on the end of it that fit right into the fuse block, the ground wire was black and I just crimped on a "O" and screwed it to the body behind the drivers kick panel. You mention a 30 amp fuse, I had circuit breakers, you should look and be sure you have them, they are the rectangular silver colored metal things that are in the fuse panel, there are 2 of them one for the windows and one for the locks. The wires you cut were for the power hatch lock by the sounds of it ( I cut mine and taped em' off as well).

I will try cutting those wires for the hatch. I connected them to the same colored wires that were coming from kick panel. The only power wire I could find when I pulled the harness off of the donor was a Violet wire that also had the square plug that plugged right into the fuse block. I guess I meant circuit breaker when I said fuse. It a square metal thing that plugs into the fuse block. I will give this another try tonight when I get home. I am going to make this thing work wether my XJ wants it to or not. Thanks for all the help FLAWLESS (and everyone else).

90red