Y 1991 cherokee xj caught on fire the other day. It died at a stop sign and it does this often and usally take a sec to start back up. Well it took longer than usual to start this time. Then when it did start my wiring harness caught on fire! It was the big group of wires the sit against the fire wall just the right of the engine if you are looking at it from the front. Does this mean the whole jeep is basically junk now? Or just replace the harness? What do i do?!?!?!?!

 

Donate it to me. I'll fix it. You had a bare wire that ground out causing the fire. You can pull a harness from a junkyard and replace the whole thing or maybe try and trace/splice the burnt wires. I replaced a whole harness once. Pulled my dash and had the whole harness swapped in a weekend

 

So all i need is a new harness? Not engine or anything else? Thats my main concern

 

So all i need is a new harness? Not engine or anything else?

 

Nobody can answer this. We don't know the extent of the damage, or how bad the fire was. How are your repair abilities? Can you do electrical work, mechanical work, or anything related to doing this job? You need to start by disassembling the areas that were damaged, and assess the extent of what's needed to repair this. You will save a ton of money doing this on your own, but, if you don't have the means, or the money, scrap it, part it out, or get another and swap what you can.

 

I can do whatever repairs i need to on my own. Thanks for that answer, that really helped. I gues ill start rippin it apart and figure out exactly what the extent of the damage is

 

And it seems that only the wire harness has damage to it but i have not really looked into because i work out of state and not had any time to look into it. If there is only fire damage to the harness, does that mean only the harness is bad? Or would i be better off dropping a new engine and harness in it?

 

If just the harness was affected you shouldn't need a new engine. However you suffered an electrical fire, so at the very least you'll need to check all sensors going to the motor to make sure nothing was damaged from the obvious short that occurred. The other things you should be checking is any plastic or rubber bits in the vicinity of the fire, heat may have damaged those types of things as well. Noggin poking time, LMAO

 

What ever you do, do not forget to check all of the vacuum lines. The heat can damage the hose very easy. If you replace all of the electrical wire and not the hose you will still have a lot of problems. But your main problem will be finding out why the electrical burned in the first place.

 

Ok thanks guys. ill do some diggin and keep it updated