I'll do a search on this tonight because I'm sure theres something on here, but if anyone wants to add to this, feel free.

I have a 97 xj and the window stopped working a few months ago. It would go down but wouldn't go back up. Without doing much research, I went ahead and bought a regulator/motor and hooked it up today. Got no response out of it.

I'm a noob at this and honestly not sure what the next step is.

Please help.

Thanks,

 

This is most likely a switch issue. The clue is that the old one would go in one direction, not the other. Since motor direction is a function of polarity, it is the switch that is not working

 

Thank you sir.

 

Which window? Driver's door? The problem I encountered was broken wiring in the driver's door due to years of bending the harness every time the door opened and closed. All my switches checked out okay.

If your switch checks fine you'll need to ring out the harness with a meter. Removing the interior panel surrounding the hood release gives access to the door harness connector. Removing the interior door panel must be done to disconnect all harness connectors from their corresponding receptacles. Ringing out the harness with a meter consists of setting the meter rotable switch to the audible tone setting, then placing one probe into one of the main harness connector individual wire receptacle contacts. That's the connector located at the hood release location. Then probe all the other individual door connector plug contacts in turn listening if you get a tone from the meter. If you hear the tone it means a wire is good. But, while holding the probes in place, exercise the harness similar to the bending motion it would be subject to when installed (door opening/closing) to see if the tone is interrupted. If it is, then the wire is broken. Do this for each contact pin in the main receptacle until you've identified all the bad wires. An assistant's help would make this check very quick and easy. Make a quick sketch of the end of the connector and on it note which wires are bad. Use the sketch later as a repair reference.

I had 5 broken wires inside my harness; one gave a tone intermittently when exercising the harness. A couple of pics to record harness routing should be done. I suggest getting some of those pressure sensitive colored dot labels at an office supply to color-code mating harness connectors and their door receptacles to make re-installation quick. Repairing the harness got all my windows working again.The removal and re-installation of the harness took the longest time - being careful to route it out & in without further damage - but finding and repairing the individual broken wires with butt splices (blue) went quickly. Good luck.

 

I had a problem with the driver's door harness on my WJ. Everything worked fine unless the door was open, then nothing worked! My mechanic found the broken wire by just pulling back the rubber cover between the body and door. He had it fixed in about 15 minutes by soldering the wire together and using shrink tubing over it. He said if you use a butt splice connector on it, it's gonna break in the same spot again quickly because it can't flex anymore. Made sense to me. Most of those wires are only 18 or 20 gauge and are a PITA to work on.

Today I had to replace a door latch on the passenger's front door and when I pulled the panel off and unplugged the door control harness, the whole sides of the harness plug would unhinge their covers so you could pull individual wire contacts out to repair/replace them! I'd never seen anything like that on a jeep before! This is on a 2000 WJ with the RKE (Remote Keyless Entry) receiver in the switch panel. Another item I noticed was the door latch had a large plastic cover over it and it was quite rusty. The latch I got at the JY was from an 03 without that cover and it wasn't rusty at all! Just saying.

BTW, for those of you who wonder why I mentioned a WJ, it's because I own one of each. A WJ and an XJ, both the same year.

 

I fixed a similar problem by reflowing the solder inside the driver's door switch.
Saves you the cost of a new switch.

 

Oh Yeah! That's another problem. The lead free solder they used lately tends to crack after a while and remelting it and adding just a touch of electronic leaded solder to the mix helps a lot.

 

Good advice...Its' the passenger side. I'll try that if the switch checks out. Thanks for input.

 

What works the best for re-soldering is to wipe off the soldering gun tip, rewet it with leaded solder, then apply it to the joint in question. That adds just enough lead to the joint without flooding the joint with solder.

 

If the solder in the switch was broken, wouldn't that make all the other windows inoperable? All the windows work except for front passenger. I'm going to check the wiring tonight and or get the multimeter out to check for voltage.

 

IDK if this helps but on my WJ, the passenger's rear window would go down, but not up. After tracing all the wiring, the problem was in the DRIVER'S door harness! Broken wire. Why it would go down but not up was a mystery.

 

Will check it out as well...Thank you.

 

Yes, you are correct. It is probably just a matter of worn contacts in the switch. Can you operate it from the passenger door?

 

Not necessarily. If it were the main feed in, yes, if it's only broken between the main feed and the contact for your window up, no.

The way I'd test it out to eliminate any wiring fault and direct it to the switch would be to:

• Find out what coloured wires go to the troublesome window motor (3 go to the door switch but only 2 to the motor)
• Go to the connector on the master switch (drivers)
• Use a multimeter and determine the main feed wire, from what I can gather only one wire will be live (Tan on the 95)
• Determine which wire is the main ground (Black on the 95)
• Get 2 jumper cables and connect one into your live and into one of the 2 feed wires for the motor
• Connect the other into ground and the other motor feed wire
• The window should move one way
• Don't leave the wires in, when making the final connection only tap it to make a connection to prevent feeding the motor power when it's at its travel limit
• Reverse this connection to swap the feed and ground to the motor
• It should then move the other way
• If all succeeds, you can eliminate the wiring to/from the motor

Personally I'd find this easier than trying to open up a switch and it quickly points blame to a more specific area.