Hope someone can point out where to start. Just bought a 91 xj, 4.0 ax15.
So was working on replacing the screwed up portion of the parking lamp circuits the previous owner had hacked to attempt to add in a trailer harness. Had no lights. Had everything looking the way the Haynes manual shows how it should be.
Then I went to jump my jeep to see if everything was working, had a very slow blinking left turn signal, then I smelled hot wires, yanked main battery terminals and disconnected everything for the lighting circuit. Removed everything I added/modified on the jeep.
Went to jump it again so I could move it out of the way and continue messing with it tomorrow. When I hooked the cables up it gave a fierce spark, and the jeep has nothing. No power anywhere for anything. I probably screwed something up, where can I start looking to diagnose at least getting everything else working again? Are there fusible links somewhere? I checked the big fuses under the hood, they were all good, but I then was frustrated and stopped.
Any insight can help. Thanks guys. Hope I didn't kill the Damn thing, this was going to be my donor jeep since my lifted one just got rear ended and I used the money to get this one.

 

Start at battery and work inward. Links should be on starter relay.

 

This is how I fixed my lights when they went out. There was a short because of the hood light cable being exposed and touching bare metal and arcing. There is a green wire which is the fusible link so check it to see if it's oddly stretchy and it then connects to 2 red wires. I ended up using 16 gauge fusible link that I picked up at autozone that came with the eyelets so I bought to boxes of that and cut the new fusible link into thirds and crimped one piece of the link onto the green wire then one on each of the other two red wires and put deprecate eyelets on each of them in order to split the load on the fusible link so they aren't running on just one fusible link wire but 3 separate ones. Should Make it a little bit more reliable and if your headlights go out from a surge, your brake lights should still work. So Check for shorts along the whole system. But that fix was just for the lighting system. But it could apply to the whole electrical system with those fusible links if I'm not mistaken?

 

This is not a good idea

your ride will probably burn to the ground.

Fusible links are just that: a specific gauge wire and length it is not universal and not supposed to be used where one would install a fuse. If a fusible link melts (this reflects a serious short circuit and/or related electrical issues) figure out why before simply replacing it.

 

We found why it kept shorting out. It was my hood light wire that was exposed and Arcing on the bare metal whenever I would close the hood, shorting the system. And I did it with my mechanic and he's one of the best jeep mechanics around. He's an XJ expert. And it isn't really meant to split the load but I case of another surge and a fusible link goes out then it will be easier to find the source of the short because only one of the lighting systems will be out instead of all of them and then we can focus on finding the origin of the problem instead of going through the whole lighting system to find it. It's more of a way to make electrical repairs to the lighting system easier.

 

^
Feel free to disregard my post.
I for one would never ever attempt a foolhardy debate with a self professed "XJ expert"

 

By adding multiple fuse able links in place of the single from factory you are making it far more likely that you will burn something else. It was designed the way it was for a reason leave it. You are going to burn your jeep down the next time something happens.

 

So now each light has its own link ?

 

Ok. I'll remove it once I get the chance.

In a way but it sounds like you should listen to the other guys.

I was just explaining what my mechanic and I did. He has the same xj I do.

 

What did the PDC replace ?