Jeep Dying

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02-10-2024, 04:04 PM

stiner777

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Jeep Dying

My son and I bought a 1989 Jeep Cherokee Limited with a Straight 6. We are trying to fix it up for his first car. And when I say trying to fix it up I mean we are running into issue after issue and need suggestions. So here is the story.
We drove the car around and it was working great. Then one day it would start. So took out the starter to get it tested, we had to replace the starter. At the same time the battery was being drained. So I replaced the starter I noticed that the battery cable were frayed and showing copper so I replaced those. I also took out the alternator to get tested and it was fine so some thing was draining ther battery. We noticed that the ther was two light underneath the dash was was always on so I took out the bulbs and this lead to the Jeep not started when the key was turned.
I did some research and decided to replace the key cylinder which helped turnover the Jeep. And it started running. Which was awesome. However that lead to another issue. The car would not turn off when key turned back to the off position. I thought the new key cylinder might be bad so I went and got another one and replace it again. That didn’t help so it was that. However to actually turn it off we had to disconnect the battery cables and turn on the Aux Fan. (I also should say that I rewired the Aux Fan to make the wiring longer.)
Then a person at NAPA said it could be the ignition switch. So I dropped the steering wheel and replaced it. That didn’t help anything. So I went back to NAPA to see if they could suggest anything else and they said it might be the relay. So I went and check the relay’s while the car was on (there was no relay diagram). When I pulled the third relay on the passenger side the engine shut off so I went and got a new one. We started the car and turned the key to shut if off and it worked.
The next day we went out to start working on it again we kept the battery cables off just incase through the night and it started right up and turned off however when we started it, it sounded different. It sounded like it was revving up and a little bit of smoke was coming up. But we kept the battery cables on.
So I didn’t work on it anymore until the next day. We went out and the battery was drained so we had to jump start the car. The nice thing was it wasn’t revving up like the day before. So I had my son get into it to drive it around but once he shifted from park the Jeep died. Then we tried again and when I heard it dieing I told him to put it into park and it tried to rev up again. So we decided to turn the Jeep back on, to idle, to try to charge the battery and this time it died after a few seconds of idleing.
This time guy at NAPA said he thinks it is something electrical and that everytime you start replacing electrical it can cause other electrical issues.
We are looking for any guidance, suggestions, etc. to help us get this jeep back to normal.