I have an 1996 jeep cherokee sport.

Okay, my headlights and blinkers were working.

Then ALL i did was pop the hood and disconnect the battery and diconnect the passenger side headlight wiring harness (Thats to the left of the battery).

Then I connected back the wiring harness correctly snug fit, and connected the battery back correctly.

Go to turn on my headlights.. and ALL my interior and back lights, back truning singals work. So pretty much every thing works except the front lights.

Im completely lost on what to do since everything is back together correctly and was working before i disconnected the wiring harness.

Any help on what to do would be so appreciated. It seems so simple but im out ideas...

Thanks.

 

Hmm...

I'm not familiar with the wiring on pre-97, but...

I assume you checked all the fuses? Inside and under hood?

Anyone know if there is a common ground for the front lights that may have gotten knocked loose?

Did you have the lights on when you disconnected or reconnected the battery? I'm just wondering about a surge or short that may have damaged the headlight switch.

Outside of that, I got nothin' right now. My brain is in network maintenance mode, not Cherokee mode.

 

I had the exact same problem on my 93. Ended up that the headlight harness plug was corroded. Did you see any white/green power when you unplugged it? I didn't notice till after but one of the pins acctually snapped off in the female side of the plug. I ended up going to the junkyard and gettin the harness plug out of a 97+ XJ and splicing it in. Check my build thread, its in there somewhere.

 

Thanks for replying.

And i checked the fuses and all seem to just fine..

When i pull the headlight switch all the way out all the dashlights all turn on, so both blinker arrows are on, stale not flashing. So basically everything that can be lit up is.

Except of course the headlights..

 

Um from as far as what i can see i doesnt look like any corrosion, no green or white powder.. I mean the two prongs in the wiring harness are shiny silver and are able to bend a little bit.

So there is no sign of them snaping from corrosion.

But as you said its gotta be somethin with that headlight wire harness, but i also dont know what goin on with the Dashlights now..

 

yeah that's definitely your problem. Both my turn signal lights would come on as well on the dash but not on the outside. i'd recommend doing what i did with the harness conversion. It has a few extra wires but you can acctually match up most of them color-wise. My 93 had 8 wires i think and the 97 harness had i think 12. Only one wire didnt have a matching color. Use heat shrink connectors and dielectric grease on the plug. I'm pretty sure the junkyard let me take it for free too because they didnt know what it was lol

 

Haha thats great.

And alrighty I'll see what i can find.

Thanks a bunch!

 

I had a similar problem on my 96 xj ended up being the dimer / turn signal switch. I think that's wat it's called. Mounted on the stering column.

 

are the ground wires ran in a series so its one wire for the entire light set-up? i had a crazy issue similar to this at one point, at random times all my lights in my dash and turn signals would just die. while driving, while parked while whatever. turned out that my under hood lamp broke off its mounting and was hanging in the engine bay with the bulb busted causing a short that would knock everything out. took me weeks to figure it out!! just disconnected it and problem solved

 

I also have a 96, and I think you might want to look at t-dogs reply.
It sounds like a switch problem from what you wrote.
I get that you worked in a lamp housing, not the switch, but if you cleaned up the lamp connection and it now draws more power then the switch can handle, it's going to fail at the next weakest link, like maybe the switch.