hey,

if you are wondering where the rear hatch dome light switch is located on a 94 xj its in the locking mechanism built onto it, replacing the switch itself seems not possible its all one unit. i took the whole unit out by unbolting 3 torx at the bottom of the hatch in the triangle shape pattern not the 4 other ones than engage inside the lock mechanism with your finger and the whole unit will come out holding on by 2 wires. the switch was completely rusted and didnt move at all and was always in the Off position. the rust built up was caused by the rear wiper spray hose that had popped off and was just spraying inside the hatch for years. after cleaning with sandpaper and wire brush the switch started working again ive used a bit of grease to makes it go smooth and checked with a multimeter that it worked right. you can see the switch after removing the hatch cover while the unit is still in the hatch but not easy to reach so i took it out.

i hope this helps someone in the future cause there seems to be a lot of difference in locations of this switch. sorry the picture is not very clear

- Marc

Thanks for posting this! I think I'm having the same issue (post here).

Could you explain how the switch works? I can't see much in my dark parking garage, and don't want to pull it and leave the cargo area unlocked.

I've got my own photo of my latch switch here and just trying to figure out how the switch itself works so I can figure out what should move and what I should clean.

Do you see anything missing or of concern?

the locking mechanism is what activates the switch when the button is pushed is the moment the light will pop on right away while the hatch hasnt even moved yet. when the hatch is closed the switch is Off and no circuit is made.

so in the first picture the lock (hatch is closed so to speak) is closed and you can see kinda top left the shinny part is pushed in and no contact is made..




in this second picture the lock is open and the switch is released and makes contact to the ground of the whole unit.




so the ground wire is being used by this switch, once this switch is working there is another switch on the rear dome light itself that decides if you want to use the switch in the hatch cause now when you open the rear hatch the dome lights come on and say if you are camping or moving a load and have the hatch open for some reason you can bypass this hatch switch by switching the dome light switch off so it wont respond to the hatch switch.

hehe thats a lot of switching i hope this helps

- Marc

as far as i see your picture looks just like mine i can see the switch on your picture top left kinda right where the wires go that corner, i see some rust on parts of your switch that wont make it slide smooth thats what i all brushed off.

marc

edit: see its hard to clean when its inside the hatch you really have to get a small wire brush in the switch to clean the contact surface while you push the switch in with your other hand and i kept testing with the multimeter till i had a solid contact and the multimeter would just have a solid beeping sound even while i wiggled the switch left to right while in the On position. a tiny rolled up piece of sandpaper really gets in there to get to the contacts clean

Thanks! That makes sense. I'll try to play around with it and polish it in the contact area on the lock mechanism as you have shown.

Just looking at it in my garage, in the dark when I was playing with it. I couldn't tell if that was what was connecting the ground or something else.

now when you are sure the switch in the hatch is working properly and the dome lights still dont come on your culprit is most likely in your rear dome light itself. take a look at the switch from the rear dome light it had melted and didnt make contact couldnt even push the switch anyway. i ended up removing the whole switch and just twisted the wires together for now until i have another switch and this one is easier to get to.



also when i finally had it all done and put it back together i blew a fuse (position 5, 10 amps Red on your fuse panel) the connector in the rear dome light switch is being hold on by the metal piece and i didnt push it on correctly and pushed the metal into the contacts and short it out, the metal slides on the side of the connector being hold in place that way.



so in order to make the rear hatch light come on by opening the hatch both switches have to work correctly.

- Marc

you are welcome, its not easy to see im messing around in the dark a lot too just a headlamp hehe but it sure is nice when i pop the hatch the whole interrior lights up in the jeep such a tiny fix makes such a difference.

to make it a bit more clean ive put an arrow on the area you really want to clean up that makes the contact thats why you want it pushed in a bit so the contacts come free and you poke some rolled up sandpaper in there.

I have been planning to get to the bottom of my domes not coming on with tailgate open for a long time, prioritized to the bottom of list a long time now. I just had that door panel off last week too, kind of doing the same thing to the rear wiper motor. Took wiper motor apart and polished up contacts and brush area. No more slow rear wiper, pushes snow off like a plow truck.


Thanks for the info. I came across this vid that helps too.

the nickintime videos are very useful he helped me out quite a bit, ive seen this one not so long ago before i started on this

same here it wasnt my first priority but just had that moment of 'Ok lets fix this for once!'