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Lights don't work after service on serpentine belt

R

Reindeer

NAXJA Forum User
Location
America
I took my '92 XJ Sport in to have the serpentine belt and harmonic balancer replaced, and the leak from the front main seal plugged.

Now my low beam headlights, driver's side front marker light, and trailer hitch light don't work. The instrument panel lights were also intermittent for awhile, and then started working steady again.

I was driving down a mountain road at sunset last night when I realized the problem. No low beams.
I had to drive the rest of the way home with high beams only, which I would have preferred not to do, but there is no where to stop on the road.

As far as I can tell, everything else works.

I checked fuses, and nothing is blown.

Does anyone know what my mechanic might have done to affect the electrical system to make this happen?

Could my light switch be faulty?
 
Last edited:
It's possible that to do the job, they took the air box out for access, and if so, it's possible they disturbed the wiring harness plug that runs to the front lights beneath it. That plug can suffer from corrosion, so it's worth a look and a cleanup periodically anyway. That doesn't explain the dash or trailer lights though.
 
Matthew Currie said:
...it's possible they disturbed the wiring harness plug that runs to the front lights beneath it. That plug can suffer from corrosion, so it's worth a look and a cleanup periodically anyway. ...
Click to expand...

Is this something that I can get to to fix, or should I let them fix it?
 
I discovered the problem.
Many of my exterior lights had burned out bulbs, and my trailer hitch light was completely melted, and could not be saved.

They all worked fine last Friday before I got my XJ serviced.
They might have been somewhat dim, but they all worked.

The mechanic got very testy with me, saying that this was not something that he did.
Frankly, I'm not sure.
I didn't like his attitude, seeing as how I just wanted to have an explanation.
I won't be going back to this guy, after being given such a hard time over something that seemed more than just an unbelievably extraordinary coincidence.

All I know is that every outside light group got some damage.
Both headlights had to be replaced, as well as all the marker lights.
Both rear marker lights were burned up so much that they melted the rubber housing.
I'm not going to replace the trailer hitch light.
I am still at a loss to understand why so many light burned out all at once in such a dramatic fashion.
The headlights had some minor condensation inside them.
Is that normal after 3 years? I thought that the beams were "sealed".

On the upside, it gave me the opportunity to purchase Sylvania Silverstar replacement headlights, and what a difference from their cheaper model! Truly amazing. Definitely worth an extra nine dollars each.
The headlights are actually white now, instead of muted yellow, and they throw a much better pattern, giving much more light to the sides of the road, much like my old Audi.

I was considering getting driving lights or fogs, but I think I will hold off for awhile on that.

Does anyone have an idea as to why my electrical system was damaged in this way? I have never had this happed to any car I owned, and it seems odd to me that after three years of owning this Jeep, it suddenly experienced an electical problem in such a dramatic fashion. Is this common to Jeeps? Please tell me that it's not.
I want to avoid it happening again.
 
Hit by lightning ? Mech used one of those jumper things that may be defective, could be alot of reasons, some accidental, some thru a mistake by whoever was working on it.
Thats one of the reasons I won't jump another car/vehicle with mine, I'll put cables across but only to quick charge their battery and I want them out of their vehicle while I'm doing it. Had one SOB after I explained it to him, that I did not want any feedback from his electrical system HIT THE FRIGGING KEY, luckily I was standing next to it and popped the + jumper cable off, rolled em right up and left. He did not get it started from me, A$$hole....
 
It does sound a little strange, but it isn't that uncommon to have a couple of bulbs out and not know it. It's not all that obvious when one headlight goes out, so you can drive a long way that way, and suddenly when the other goes, you think "both my headlights blew at the same time."

The melting seems odd, but I can't think of anything obvious that the mechanic might have done to cause that. The only thing I can think of is that he might have accidentally disconnected the line to the voltage regulator, and run it briefly unregulated with the lights on, causing overvoltage. A disconnected field line should show up as an engine code, though, because the regulator is in the engine computer. If you haven't yet restarted too many times, there's a possibility a code could still be lurking. You could try that (ignition on-off-on-off-on, and then read the two-digit pulsed codes of the check engine light; in your case, expect 12 and 55 as normal, anything else isn't).

I don't think it's likely, though. My guess is coincidence combined with cumulative failures you hadn't noticed before.
 
Thanks for all the feedback, everyone.


Lightning seems unlikely, as I have seen no other evidence of a strike.

I guess that it's possible that I just didn't notice, but I check my lights every weekend, so, at most, some of them could have been out for up to a week.
However, my wife says that the lights were working on Wednesday evening,
so that leaves a window of 48 hours where the lights could have blown one by one without my noticing, because I didn't do any night time driving Thursday or Friday nights.

It remains a mystery.

Is it possible for one light (like the trailer hitch light) shorting out the others?
 
The instrument panel lights were also intermittent for awhile, and then started working steady again.
Click to expand...
This looks to me like a bad ground wire, causing the alternator to run away, your right something as wrong and burnd all those bulbs.JMO
 
langer1 said:
This looks to me like a bad ground wire, causing the alternator to run away, your right something as wrong and burnd all those bulbs.JMO
Click to expand...

I disconnected the battery recently to clean corrosion off of it.
Could this have caused a problem?
My mechanic told me to disconnect the negative terminal.
Was this bad information?
 
Reindeer said:
I disconnected the battery recently to clean corrosion off of it.
Could this have caused a problem?
My mechanic told me to disconnect the negative terminal.
Was this bad information?
Click to expand...
No, only if you had it running when you disconnected the battery.
 
In your first post, you say your dash lights went off a couple of times.

That, is when the voltage ran away would be my guess. So if you did not find what did that it will surely happen again.
 
langer1 said:
In your first post, you say your dash lights went off a couple of times.
Click to expand...

Yes. It happened once, and is not reproducable.
It happened right after I turned the engine on.
I was also testing the dash lights, dimming and then brightening them, to see if that worked as well. The dash displayed went off suddenly, and stayed off until I restarted the engine.

Thankfully, it hasn't reoccured.
 
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