Help Wanted on YJ

Well my friend went on ahead and bought a POS YJ I told him to not buy for $4500 and he thought I knew everything which there was to know.

So who wants to drive down to Pueblo to help us? He'll pay for your time and will supply plenty of soda and pizza. Might also be able to convience his dad to give a tour of the fish hatchery.

But he needs the wiring problems solved asap(headlights, interior lights, fans, clock, speedo, randoms).

Well for starters, tell us the actual problems specifically. Is it that NOTHING electrical is working?

Start looking in the fuse block in the engine compartment - these are the big fuses that look more like relays than fuses, then there's the large fuses in there too. If those are all good, then start looking at the grounding issues.

An easy way to figure out if a main ground strap is busted or corroded is to simply take a jumper cable - just one side, the red or the black and make it a grounding jumper from the neg. side of the battery to the block - see if that makes things work, if not, then clamp it on the body, see if that works, if not, then to the frame.

The fuseable link on the neg. side cable can sometimes corrode inside the insulation - take a knife and cut it open and see if it's white and crusty. Same with both main battery cables. They can corrode and not show outside the insulation coating.

That should get you started on a diagnosis.

Best of luck!

Ill try and get some pictures up by monday of the problems. Some things work other things dont. the main issue is the headlights. No power at all and the fuses are fine. looks like the previous owner took power from the headlights and spliced it into another bulb like fixture. Pictures are all that can detail the problems.

Tomorrow were just gonna do vital fluid changes and then ill continue to dick with the wiring on monday.

Also 4.2L are gas hogs to the bone. Wasted 1/4 tank just revving. Im thinking after the core electrical issues are over ill sell him my renix head and intake and just convert it to a mpi 4.2L.

Well we spent a good three hours today tracing wires and ended up getting about 1/2 of them labeled. I consider that a great accopmlishment since I had to keep my friend on task and stop worring about cosmetic problems.

The main thing thats bugging the hell out of me is that on the main wiring harness there are a couple groupings that are just stripped and crimped all together. Some of these wires show melting. Also the ignition coil stays very warm when the battery is connected and im worried this will cause a underhood fire someday.

Headlights still arent fixed and I dont believe Ill nake much progress without having a wiring diagram. My 88 FSM doesnt help much except for the vacumm diagram on the 4.2L and thats something for another day because most of the vacumm hoses are disconnected and plugged.

Anyone free Monday to help us on this beast. More brain power the better because Ive exhausted mine.

As for the headlights the turn signal fuse keeps blowing but the turn signals work fine. Also the high beam switch is broken. Could this possibly be the reason why the headlights dont work?

Wow........ your friend definitely sounds like he got shafted. $4500 for that kind of mess........ and for a YJ????

Ya know, you might be better off looking into just swapping in a good stock wiring harness from a salvage YJ rather than trying to get that cobbled up mess working.

there was a YJ for sale here in the rock on a lot for 4900 and it lasted just a couple days, go figure.

We got the bitches lights to turn on. Still have some wires to figure out but its runs and now more of the dash works. Only thing left to fix is the speedo. We put in a new cable and I feel it lock and not spin when the tranny is in park but it just free spins in nuetral. So I think the speedo gear is schredded(sp?) or the actual mechanism that that the gear and cable engage at is fubar'd.