Hey fellas, I've ran into a few problems with my 1996 Jeep Cherokee Clacsic , and I was wondering if anyone might be able to help me out. This is my first automobile so I'm new to this kind of thing. But I would love to teach myself how to troubleshoot and fix my jeep.

The Jeep belonged to my friends mom, who took really good care of it. She sold it to her friends son who trashed it. He got into a wreck which busted up the front end and he replaced the stock stereo with a touch screen. Then she bought it back from him for 800 and gave it to me. He took out the touch screen and shoved a cheap Sony xplod cd player in there, not hooked up. And now my troubles begin...

First off, my headlights start to flicker on and off after driving for about 15 minutes. I have to turn them off and back on to get them to stop but it will go right back to flickering in about 5 minutes.

Secondly, when I press the power unlock button, it makes a noise but doesn't unlock. However the lock button does work. Manually pressing the lock to locked/unlocked is really hard and has lots of resistance.

Thirdly, I plugged the cd player up, along with a amp and subs. When I turn my headlights off it restarts my cd player. The cd player also has no memory, such as clock, radio, stations or any of the eq settings.

Has anybody encountered any of these problems before? Does anybody have any advice? Can anybody point me in the right direction?

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Kris

 

The flickering headlights could be a couple of things. I'd start by pulling the headlight switch and taking a good look at the pins and plug. They overheat. You might consider just changing it as long as it's out. Something is overheating after it runs awhile and this is the primary culprit.
Don't bother looking for headlight relays, there aren't any. Power flows through the light switch (which has an internal circuit breaker), then through the high/low dimmer switch, then to the headlight bulbs.

The door locks probably just need the mechanism cleaned and greased. Pull the interior panel off the door and have at it. Probably are too stiff for the power actuators to overcome.
Spray with something like PB blaster until all the old grease and crap flush out of there, then shoot a little white lithium grease on moving parts as necessary.

Most CD players, radios, etc have two power leads, one to constant +12V, to keep the memory, settings, etc and a second +12V switched power lead to turn on/off with the ignition. Are those connected to the correct power sources?

 

Spray "chain'n cable lube" is handy for inside the door, like the lock mechanism and the window gears. Not sure weather or not it's lithium. It really shoots. I can lube my hinges from across the street!