w_huisman

Just purchased a 97 Cherokee Sport and I've got two problems.

1. The hatch door won't open. I went over to my friend's place this morning, opened the hatch and loaded some stuff, and then closed it. Drove 6 blocks to home, then tried opening the hatch and it just won't open. So if anyone has some tips, tricks, or suggestions on how to deal with that, I would sure appreciate hearing them.

2. The license plate light on the hatch barely comes on with the tail lights. It will come on bright when you open the hatch (which I can't do anymore), but when the hatch is closed it glows so dimly you wouldn't think it was on at first glance (the filament is barely showing color). It looked like the usual 168 or 194 bulb, so I tried both of those and got the same result. So am I looking for a wiring issue, or is it supposed to use some special bulb?

TIA!

w_huisman

bump

w_huisman

3 and a half pages of new posts since I bumped this yesterday...

If the reason I'm not receiving any replies is because I'm not following forum etiquette, please let me know what I'm doing wrong so I can correct it.

Otherwise... what gives? Does no one know how to open a stuck hatch on a 97 Cherokee sport?

Just to prove that I have tried to help myself, I grabbed a haynes/chilton manual from the library but it only shows details of tailgate latches (don't know what year those were in use) and not the latch on the full hatch doors.

ANY help would be GREATLY appreciated. TIA!

nick_n_ii

'97 and new hatches are known for having issues, you'll need to trya nd get the inside cover off to open it and adjust the handle from inside teh hatch.

As for the license plat light, sounds like a mild sort.. I'd start but checking out where the wires flex going into the hatch.

caged

push with a little bit of pressure just above the handle, that has worked for some in the past. i have also heard of using a screwdriver and slip it up inside the handle to push on the release.

as for the light, seems it is shorting out on the inside of the hatch somewhere.
once you get the hatch open, remove the hatch skin and look around in there.

you're not getting the answers, probably because no one knows the answer. be patient mang.

w_huisman

Thanks guys. I've tried the pressure above the handle trick with no luck. So hopefully I can figure out how to use the screwdriver to trigger the release from the outside. Although I haven't looked it over, pulling the paneling off from the inside with the hatch closed will probably be a real PITA.

There have been more than SEVEN pages of posts since I made my original post at 11:44am on March 7th. How much longer should I have waited before bumping my thread? I was worried it was going to get lost in the depths of all the new topics posted after mine. It always takes me a bit to get used to the standard operation procedure of a new forum, so please forgive me if I seemed to anxious.

w_huisman

My buddy got the hatch open for me. I bought the jeep from his bro-in-law, so I had asked him to ask his bro-in-law the next time he saw him if there were any tricks to try.

While I was gone last night, my buddy had talked to his bro-in-law about it, and all the B-I-L had to offer was the press/push/pull on the hatch routine. He went over to my place and started messing with it, trying the same things I had done, pressing/bumping/pulling/punching all over the tailgate with no luck. Then out of sheer frustration he got pissed and punched the tailgate. Low and behold, it popped!

After lubing everything up with penetrating oil and actuating the latching mechanism with a screwdriver a few times, he got the hatch to open consistently again.

Now, if it ever warms up here again, I'm gonna pull the whole latch out of there, soak it down with brake cleaner, blow it out with air, and get it cleaned up really good (and get at that license plate wiring issue too).

Thanks guys!

smtippin

This forum is super quick at responding to replies normally and I have seen no hazing or neglect for newbies. I agree that the most probable reason you didn't get an instant response was that we didn't have an answer for you. I know for sure that I didn't. Hang around and you'll see for yourself that we are a good group of folk.

Are you in Souix Falls or something? How are you in 3 states at once?

s

w_huisman

LOL... I actually live in Rock Rapids, IA. About 3 miles south of the Minnesota boarder and about 10 miles east of the SD boarder. My wife works in Sioux Falls, SD and is originally from Hills, MN, which is about 2 miles north of the IA boarder and 5 miles east of the SD boarder.

So yeah, I'm in MN, IA, and SD almost on a daily basis.

Thanks for the encouragement. I actually bought this Jeep for my son, who turns 15 in a couple of weeks. He'll be taking driver's ed classes this summer and then be able to drive to work and school. My friend, who I mentioned in my previous post, owned this jeep 10 years or so ago, and then sold it to his sister and B-I-L about 6 or 7 years ago. So, since I knew them well and knew it's history, when the B-I-L offered it for sale I jumped on it.

Anyway, enough babbling. Thanks for the post.

smtippin

[quote=w_huisman;139684]I actually bought this Jeep for my son, who turns 15 in a couple of weeks. quote]

Sounds like you'll have plenty of opportunity for the father/son bonding when wrenching. If you hang around on this forum, you will get totally bit by the bug and start thinking of modifications at all hours of the night. When I was growing up, I had a 78 Jeep Cherokee Chief with the 401 big block. It would have been a wrencher's dream, but my dad only knew how to throw money at cars, so it was a missed opportunity. Now...my dad and I both have the same year, trim, manual transmission, etc. XJ so when I visit, I make sure to drag him into the garage and show him a thing or two.

congrats on the buy. I'm sure you'll get to know you're new XJ's quirks/personality in no time.

s

w_huisman

I finally got into looking for the reason for the rear license plate light not working yesterday. I pulled off the bulb housing and the long skinny exterior trim piece to expose the wires going back into the hatch door. That area looked fine.

Then I pulled the trim off the interior door hatch. Using a volt meter I tested the wires back to the point at which they plug in to the connector at the top left corner of the hatch. Everything was fine. Then I pulled the piece of interior roof trim to expose the wires coming from the front of the vehicle. At that point I had the 12V for the license plate light I was looking for (instead of the 0.8V I had been getting up to that point), so I knew the short was between the interior and the connector at the top left corner of the hatch. That wiring (between the connector and the interior roof) was only about 1ft long, and when I pulled the rubber boot that houses the wiring between the roof and the hatch door, the problem was obvious.

The hatch door was wired for power locks, a windshield wiper, defrost, and the license plate light. So there are around 20 wires running through that boot. I'm not exaggerating when I say that nearly half of them were broke, and another 25% of them had cracked casing plastic exposing the wire. What a mess.

After trimming out 6 - 18" of each of the wires and splicing in new (staggering the crimp connectors so as not to create too much bulk in one place), EVERYTHING works. The defrost, the rear wiper (including the washer fluid), and the darn license plate light.

Is there anything I can do to help prevent that from happening again, or should I just plan on repairing that area ever 50k miles or so? At least I'll know where to start looking.

smtippin

I've pulled the rear panels off of many XJs in the Jhnk Yards and none of them looked bad. I'm not sure how yours turned out htat way, but I don't think it is a common enough problem to think tht you'd have to redo it every 50k miles. Maybe others will chime in, but I don't think you should have problems with it in the future (no jinx).

s

w_huisman

The wires were broke between the hatch and the interior roof, where they flex when opening/closing the hatch.

Yesterday I installed two rear shocks, ran a qt of ATF in the crankcase for a couple dozen miles, then changed oil and spark plugs. Gained about 10psi of oil pressure (oil must have really been sheared) and it hums like a top at idle.

Still have one more shock to replace in the front (it's visibly leaking), and then I'll start trying to figure out the cause of a wobble/vibration in the steering wheel that comes and goes at highway speeds (probably a worn our steering linkage of some sort).

It's a fun little machine to rip around in.

ItsBlue4

so i want to say thanks to this post it saved me from chasing my tail trying to find my issue. I have a 97 and out of the 14 wires going into my gate 12 were cracked and broken. I replaced them all and now everything works. Including that stupid wiper. I wish I had the time to take it out and weld a patch over it. Ill post some wire pix!

Thanks Again!!!