jefferydavid

I bought my first Jeep, its a 91 Cherokee and im having a problem with the park lights(both front and back). When ever I turn them on the fuse blows within a second. so that lead me to think that there was a short *somewhere*. So i took the lens off and checked all for sockets for corrosion or other obvious problems and they all checked out fine. So i decided to start pulling it apart from the rear park lights and work my way up. Once i got to the drivers side rear light harness I ran into some trouble. It is an eight pin harness as I am sure you guys know. what the problem is, is four of the pins on the harness (two on top and two on the bottom) do not get any power. Im assuming that two are for the ground and one would be my park lights. I cant quite think of what the fourth one would be. Also for some reason beyond me another one of the pins im getting 12v constantly from it. Like I said this is my first Jeep and my first build so these questions might seem dumb but please humour me.

Does anyone have some insight as to why my park lights are blowing fuses?

Can anyone recommend a better way to trouble shoot this sort of problem?

Anybody know why im getting constant twelve volt this far back at the harness?

below is a *diagram* of the harness itself. I can take pictures if needed. Any help at all would be very appreciated, and I will be posting pictures of my progress on this build in the build section as I progress.


(?) (constant 12v) (brake) (?)
(back up) (signals) (?) (?)

JeepCoMJ

any other electrical issues? do you have power to the dash lights or the radio?


remove the rear hatch panel, and tell me if there is a blue 2 wire single pin female connector plugged into a black single wire male pin connecter on the driver's side above the rear left speaker.

Desert Rat

I just had this same problem a week ago. I had no park lamps, dash lights, license light, taillights or lights on warning chime. I removed all the bulbs, replaced the fuse and then reinstalled each bulb one at a time until the fuse blew. It turned out to be the license light bulb. I wasted half a day prior to doing this ripping the dash and drivers rear panel out chasing wires and checking connectors because I ignored rule #1, K.I.S.S.

jefferydavid

I read this and went out and checked if there was. turns out there is and they were connected, so I decided to check through everything with them unplugged and put a new fuse in its place, as it turns out that solved all my problems. why would this work? Dont get me wrong im not complaining but im just curious what this is?

P.s. thank you so much for the help

89Laredo

IIRC the blue is a wire for the license plate light (used for the factory tire carrier), and the black is a ground. Connecting these would short the light circuit straight to ground, therefore drawing too many amps, and blowing your fuse..

JeepCoMJ

the blue wire does nothing, same with the black. they're just there...I've never once seen them connected to anything.

it back feeds power through the ground circuit. it probably also took out your radio fuse and your parking lamp fuse. that would also mean your cigarette lighter doesn't work.

I found this all out on a cherokee that I built for a friend...she let her best friend's idiot boyfriend install the CD player and new speakers and he fubar'd the whole electrical system by connecting those...I had to replace half the wires in the cherokee after I found the issue because he just put bigger fuses in and it was smoking in the rear hatch...he connected them when installing the speakers.

84wagoneer

wow. so, i have been having this EXACT problem. i checked bulbs wiring, everything, whole nine yards. i checked my back hatch, and sure as *****, those wires were connected to eachother... hahah

radio flyer

winston 427 did a write up on this very problem

jefferydavid

thanks again to everyone for their help i can continue the "build" on my new jeep!!

JeepCoMJ

no problem