hatch wiring fun

The hatch on my '91 beater is in pretty bad shape--it has a crack running through the left side, half of the heater/defrost wires are broken, the wiring in the hatch is torn up from my little brother trying to learn about stereos, and the trim panel is mangled and held on with anchor bolts.

I bought a '96 hatch from the junkyard that was in good condition and was hoping that I could transfer the lock cylinders, and add some features like work lighting. However, the hatch does not seem to have all the wiring. For example there does not appear to be any speaker wiring (the donor XJ had a soundbar), and there is not a power lock actuator or even a pigtail for it.

I don't mind running more wires but the harness is held down by rubber straps with rivets and I'm not real sure how to deal with that.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

It's a pita, I'm facing the same problem. You have to drill out the rivets to get the harness out,. I've got a nice hatch sitting in my driveway & have been avoiding this job myself. Wrap the loom in electrical tape where it goes through the pillars before you reinstall it. That will simplify fishing it back up through them. Make sure you only drill out the rivets for the loom, don't do the ones for the hatch props. You don't need to reuse all the hold downs, but you should use a couple of them. Have fun! If I can find a white hatch with the right wiring I just might sell the one I've got now.eace:

I found the power lock actuator pigtail (it was tucked up top instead of run down to where the lock sits). I got the rivets on the hatch drilled out pretty easily. I will have to run wires for speakers and work lights. It looks like the biggest problem will be getting the wires through the angled rubber seal.

I noticed that there are eight wires in the harness from the hatch, but only five wires are used on the hatch end of the connector. I have to find out what the unused wires are for--I might be able to reuse the body harness plug.

I looked up the wire colors and it seems that the two missing wires in the 96 harness are for the power lock actuator. I have those in my body harness so that's not a big deal.

One interesting thing is that the cargo light is activated by a jamb switch on the latch mechanism. It basically acts the same as jamb switches on the door pillars, meaning that it's always hot, so I should be able to hook the work lights into that circuit so that they come on whenever I open the hatch. The circuit may also be grounded through the hatch light itself (I'm not sure yet), which would let me turn them on and off by hitting the hatch light. If not, I'll install an inline switch so that I can turn them on and off manually (probably use lights with switches built in).

I think the easiest thing to do is pull my current hatch pigtail (the long wire bundle that runs through the hatch and quarter panel), keep the existing body side plugs attached, and run the cut end through the new panel. That will give me all of my existing wires (speakers and everything), and I'll only need to add two wires to control the brake lamps. This will probably be easier than trying to cram four speaker wires into the newer pigtail.