This is the first jeep I have owned, so some of these things are unfamiliar to me. I was doing some maintenance of the wiring and saw this hose... Not sure if it goes somewhere, or just hangs in the location it is. It seems to be a breather / vent

The reason I was working near that hose is because I started noticing my battery draining all the way down to 8v or so, and discovered oil has saturated some of the large connectors that were near that left side of the engine black above that hose. It seems that it caused the insulation to break down and several of the wires entering the largest connector were compromised, causing a good bit of shorting to happen especially when shutting off the engine (sometimes it would keep running for a few seconds) and also hesitation, and of course the battery was being drained in a single night. Did a good test of the negative side with a amp meter and narrowed it down to one or two fuses on the panel in the engine compartment. Then tracked down that connector which was messed up. It's mostly fixed now, had to spend quite a lot of very uncomfortable hours pain-stakingly using a good high grade loom tape to insulate each wire, and then re-wrapping the entire harness in that area, to eliminate the shorting and ingress of oil and water. It seems to have worked now, battery holding firm, and no running issues anymore.

Now just trying to figure out what that hose is for.



hose, but not sure.

 

It's a breather for the transfer case. I think it usually has a bracket that hangs off the back stud of the valve cover.

 

Thank you!! I guess it should just be kept high, near that rear stud location on the valve cover. I think I may end up needing to replace the valve cover gasket soon anyway, it seems to seep alot on the passenger side.
In general with over 230K on this jeep, it seems to be doing pretty well.

 

Go with the better blue silicon FelPro gasket. The cheap cork ones always end up leaking again in a few years, and tend to self destruct the next time you pull the cover.