I have a 96’ Cherokee that I bought with little knowledge of its history. But got it cheap with a broke piston skirt, rebuilt the engine and just working out small issues. Upon installing a blower switch for the ac, I found 2 bundles of unused plugs (one on each side of the steering column) and wonder if anyone knew what they could possibly be for?

 

Did you have any switches mounted on the plates you took off? I'm guessing no since you don't have the full cluster.

On my '88 the ones on the left are for Fog Lights and Rear Window defogger. On the right are the Power/Comfort switch (not applicable to a '96) and the rear window wiper/washer.

If your XJ doesn't have these options, you won't have the switches but the connectors are there. The small ones are for the illumination bulbs


The left side on my XJ next to the headlight switch:

 

I see, yeah there’s no switches in my panel. Thanks for the info! I was having trouble running down what they were. With it only having lights for oil pressure and engine temp I was considering using those panel locations for gauges but didn’t want to block those plugs if they were useful for anything. Thanks again!!

 

A common mod is to swap out your cluster for the full one. You can often find them in salvage yards, eBay and other sites. You can swap out your speedo to preserve your odometer although the full cluster includes a trip odo.. It will add a tach, move the fuel to the small location and add the water temp, oil pressure and battery gauge,

There's a bunch of posts on here and plenty of YT vids if you prefer to go that route.

 

Oh ok, good to know. I didn’t know I could keep the speedometer in a cluster swap, that sounds like the cleaner way to go.