1991 4 door 4.0 litre Cherokee Laredo, 300,000 miles.

3 days ago all the windows stopped working! All of them! They will not work from the master switch on the driver's door; they will not work from the individual switches on their own doors. Up until 3 days ago, all of the windows worked perfectly.

I checked this forum and a few other places for ideas. I can confirm: all the wires in that rubber tube between the door and the frame are undamaged, I switched out fuse #6 (the 30A 12V circuit breaker, because it was $5.25 at AutoZone for an identical part and I really, really hoped that would be the quick fix...but no...)

Speaking of being cheap, I used my splendid bright red $4 Harbor Freight multimeter to check all the switches in the driver's door, and, aha! The others are good but the "Lock Windows" switch seems dead. This makes sense to my limited electrical understanding, if that switch is broken, then none of the other switches can complete the circuit, and hence all the windows are basically kaput until it's fixed?

My wife & I don't have kids, there is no reason for us to ever use that switch (we haven't in the 16 years we've owned "Glenda the Jeep"). A replacement panel/module for that driver's door is crazy money on ebay, $95 + shipping for one that looks even more beat-up than the one I currently have; $159 + shipping for a "new old stock" one that has been presumably languishing in a Jeep dealer's stock room since Bush 41 was President. If I have to buy one, I'll buy the new old stock one.

But before I do that...how do I bypass the switch?

Thank you!

Johnny.

 

Are there some wires on the lock switch? Depending on what they do, you could cut those wires, or connect them. Can you show a photo of the electrical behind the switch? Also, do you have a soldering iron?

 

You sure you searched correctly?
this has been in several threads I reckon

Bypassing/jumping as well as resoldering for different issues with the main switch

 

Thank you for the suggestions - more particularly, I spent a greater amount of time looking in this forum, and you are quite right, the problem has been discussed many times.

I found this resource listing all of the wire colors to be useful, and accurate: https://www.ksuspensionfab.com/uploads/7/2/2/5/72259061/jeep_cherokee_1991-2001.pdf

One thing it missed out, though, are the tan and white wires that seem to feed that "lock windows" switch terminals, directly. Reading more at this forum, there has been quite a lot of discussion about jumping the tan wire into various other wires to bypass the switch and get power to the circuit. It seems that people report various degrees of success.

What do I know for certain thanks to the magic $4 Harbor Freight multimeter? The wiring harness is good. The switch is bad.

What do I know from reading the forum? When the lock window switch breaks, the windows become inoperable. In the longest thread here, the original poster found that the problem was only remedied by replacing the switches, and apparently suitable switches can be found for $40 or so if you don't mind taking apart the door panel and piecing it back together.

I was leery about spending a decent chunk of change on a used panel pulled from a 30 year old car at a junkyard. But then I discovered that someone is making the part, and selling it for roughly the same money that some ebay vendors confidently expect for their pick & pull part.

I figure if I took it to a mechanic to try to get this resolved, his answer may very well be the same and then I'm out his fee as well as still possibly have to source the part. The panel in my Jeep is all scratched up anyway. I'll take a gamble on this $130 plug-and-play part solving the problem: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/smp-ds1231?seid=srese1&gclid=CjwKCAiA6aSABhApEiwA6Cbm_ yNLBS2rZ0zWNP4v4h8B4ibJbEEf8liBVy93OtITL7np9RL865q QURoCO8EQAvD_BwE

 

what I did when I had window control issues, is take the switch out and resolder the points on the little board, which fixed it.

Before you put a new part in: have you verified if you have power to the switch?

It was another cause of one of my driver-side switch failures at some stage. It is not uncommon for wires to break in the area between chasis and door
You can check by pushing the rubber boot back into the door to expose the wire section.