Power locks SLOW

My power locks on my 91 XJ work one of 3 ways:
1. normal
2. I have to rapidly press "lock" or "unlock" then they slowly work or
3. they wont work at all. You can hear them try, but they dont.

When I first bought the jeep the rear doors were very hard to open from the outside. I took apart and cleaned the latches and now they work great, but the actual power locks still suck. thanks.

same on my 89, rf door works them great, lf door is intermittent some times normal ,sometimes weak. I think its a bad ground in the door wiring. no need to lock the beast at night here so I dont use them much

I had that problem on my F-150 once. All I did was take apart the switches and clean the contacts. They have worked fine ever since. I don't have power windows or locks on my jeep, so I'm not sure if they have the same type set up.

Do you have the keyless entry too?

There's a write-up on improving the performance of the locks if you search the forum. It uses a pair of extra relays to allow more voltage to the solenoids.

Also as Bcmaxx and 4lowandgo say, start checking the connectors, especially in the pass door. Mine got very week weak and only some doors would unlock. Mine turned out to be a pretty badly corroded connector in the pass door. Once I cleaned it up, the door locks worked OK.

The problem comes from the wiring harness, as explained in the fix-it on the relay mod. Power for the existing relays and switches has to pass from the passenger side to the driver's door, and back again to the passenger door. This is accomplished by a wiring loom that is placed under the carpet at the factory. (Go figure.) Add 15 years of corrosion, and the door lock solenoids see less than 10 volts - sometimes as little as 8VDC. They just don't get enough power to do the job.

Some have cleaned every connection in the system and got good results, others did the additional relay mod, which brings power straight to the passenger side and introduces it there, using the existing wires to simply provide a switching current. Seems to work well, I plan on it when I gets to the point of being the most annoying non-function I have. Honey-do's and no A/C outvote it right now.

Saudade said:

Do you have the keyless entry too?

There's a write-up on improving the performance of the locks if you search the forum. It uses a pair of extra relays to allow more voltage to the solenoids.

Also as Bcmaxx and 4lowandgo say, start checking the connectors, especially in the pass door. Mine got very week weak and only some doors would unlock. Mine turned out to be a pretty badly corroded connector in the pass door. Once I cleaned it up, the door locks worked OK.

Click to expand...

You should find this if you search "greg smith", but IIRC it was mainly for renix era. My 94 did the same thing and I pulled the doors apart and cleaned the connectors and greased all the moving parts---now everything works as it should.

Jess said:

You should find this if you search "greg smith", but IIRC it was mainly for renix era. My 94 did the same thing and I pulled the doors apart and cleaned the connectors and greased all the moving parts---now everything works as it should.

Click to expand...

Mine has the keyless entry and already had the relays under the pass side kick panel. Mine just needed a good "connector scrubbing" to get it working.

Ah, I use to have the same problem when I had my 88. During the Winter I pretty much had to say screw it because the locks almost didn't work at all. Nice to finally know how to fix the problem though.

I forget who posted this, but I did a lot of searching and came up with this:

http://soxja.org/images/pics/Bypass/Bypass.html

It worked for a couple people at least.

I still have yet to do it because I'm not to sure what I am looking for in the "red splice connectors"

Jess said:

You should find this if you search "greg smith", but IIRC it was mainly for renix era. My 94 did the same thing and I pulled the doors apart and cleaned the connectors and greased all the moving parts---now everything works as it should.

Click to expand...

Here is the thread in question, and it does work on more than just "Renix era" XJs.

http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1874&highlight=greg+smith+door