Extended Idle 97-01: A budget conscious install

I originally wrote this up on jeepforum.com, and got some of the information from . I figured there are probably some folks on that aren't on that forum, so I wanted to show some love to this forum and put this out there for others who may want to do the same thing.

The thread details how I made a defroster switch into an extended idle by making two very simple and easy circuit board modificaitons. Details are here, Posts 42 and 44.

Because I already had some of the parts, my entire modification cost under $50. If you don't have the parts, you can easily and cheaply grab them off of eBay or the pick-n-pull and get a similar result.

Extended Idle switches are rare, and so are the 4 switch panels. The last one I saw on eBay was at or over $300, and neither of those included the 4 switch panel. This is an inexpensive alternative for a nice factory function.

I scanned through your write-up. Looks easy but also somewhat involved. Is the high idle feature really that useful? I guess people use it when winching or possibly running an air compressor?

You can do a high idle mod for less than $5 all you need is to ground a specific pin on the PCM (don't remember off hand). A piece of wire, and a toggle switch is all that's needed. The engine side wiring harness is wired for it, but IIRC the interior side is not unless it was OEM installed.

maxbraketorque said:

I scanned through your write-up. Looks easy but also somewhat involved. Is the high idle feature really that useful? I guess people use it when winching or possibly running an air compressor?

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I have found it useful (so far) for a few things. A slightly quicker warm up, and higher alternator output when jumping someone else's rig and when winching. I'm sure there are others out there that could chime in, but that's my findings so far. I don't have working AC yet, so I won't be able to see if that makes a difference in Park until later in the summer.

scoobyxj said:

You can do a high idle mod for less than $5 all you need is to ground a specific pin on the PCM (don't remember off hand). A piece of wire, and a toggle switch is all that's needed. The engine side wiring harness is wired for it, but IIRC the interior side is not unless it was OEM installed.

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Yes, you certainly can, simply grounding the pin with a toggle will accomplish the same thing. I wanted to add some other lighting circuits to my rig, and I wanted a clean factory looking install. Can't get that with a simple toggle!

Tinkering Fox has an excellent video on YouTube doing this on the 97+ XJ's that I followed to do mine. Worked awesome. Didn't have to splice and cut into my ECM harness like many others do. His video is extremely detailed.