Good morning Jeep community,

I recently purchased a 1994 Jeep Cherokee Sport - 4 Door 4x4 as a winter vehicle so I can put my 2011 Camaro SS away for the Michigan winters ha. This was more or less of a impulse buy as my first choice was to get winter tires for the Camaro and huff it through the winter like I had the last 2 winters on summer tires lol. But I saw this Jeep listed on Craig's List for $1500 and purchased it for $1300. I didnt know much about the Cherokee and its typical problems and now with research I have found mine has most of those problems lol. From the pictures attached you can see its not a bad vehicle at glance and it does run well but the rust is taking over. The floor pans have rusted through and you can see the carpet hanging out the bottom in many places.

But the real advice I need from the experts on this forum is what to do about the tail lamp problem I ran into. I originally just thought the brake light bulb on the driver's side was out and everything else was working pretty normal aside from a spastic blinker. When I looked into it further I see that the dang wires have basically been cut. I am no electrical/wiring type, so I took it to a local mechanic and he said that basically all the wiring and harnesses that it was attached to have been removed for some reason or another and it would take about $350 to fix.
I didnt plan on putting too much money into this vehicle right now but a brake light is too serious for me to ignore, its an issue of safety for everyone around. So, what should I do? Go to a junk yard and see if I can find the replacements needed or should I just let him fix it for $350; I just dont know how easy all of this is.

Sorry for the long story and thank you in advance!

 

Hold for pictures as I change file sizes lol

 

Brake Light Issue

 

Go to the junk yard and get the wiring, and then go get some butt connectors and a pair of wire pliers . Shouldn't cost you more than $30 and no more than 40 minutes of your time. I'm not a professional at wiring myself, I learned by installing aftermarket radios, subs and amps in my vehicles. Looks like you may wanna grab that lower bulb socket too.

 

The rest of the intro pictures:

 

more

 

Roof

 

Interior

 

Ok Awesome, thanks for the quick reply, that doesnt sound terribly difficult. I havent talked to the mechanic direct (I had my father in law drop it off as he doesnt work during the day) but it sounded like the wiring goes from the front of the vehicle to the rear and runs along the rockers. Does anyone know if that is correct? Either way, seems like this would be a problem as my rockers are completely rusted out, suggestions?

 

Look behind the trim panel in the left rear. On my 89' all the tail lights plug into the main harness back there. If your's is the same it should be as easy as unplug the bad harness and plug in the JY ones.

 

Do this^

You shouldn't need to cut and splice. The harness for the taillights disconnects from the main harness, so just get another one and then plug and play.

 

OK great, I will look behind the trim panel today and see what I find. Just out of curiosity, why plug in the YJ harness? Easier to find, or what?

 

Not YJ, JY as in Junk Yard.

 

ohhhhhhhh hahahaha, I'm so used to seeing these jeep acronyms I didnt read the original sentence correctly. Too funny lol.
Thank you though!