bigwave

I am now chasing the dome lights staying on, I know for sure one of the rear hatch buttons are bad but I also have a second cause somewhere. Will unplugging the "Key Lock" switch shut it off or must the circuit be hooked up? Thanks Oh, and the dealer told me for sure the back hatch switch is bad but I told them I didn't want to sink a bunch of money in this rig so they stopped there. They are still barking about the BCM, but pretty much everything else is working correctly and with the ignition on the lights go on and off as they should.

roundrbn

number one is to make sure each door jam switch works if u have a vic it will show door open u can buy a set of magnets put on each door to make sure switch is connecting also pull fuse from passenger floor fuse second one from left yellow it will turn off courtesy lights until u find the short

dave1123

Okay, you can turn off the interior lights by turning down the brightness of the dash lights until it clicks. This will keep the interior lights from coming on when you open any doors. Likewise, if you turn them up until it clicks, the lights will stay on at any time, even while driving.

About the door switches. My '97 ZJ had the old nail-head door jam switches whereas my '00 WJ has it's switches in the door latches. They are plunger microswitches mounted on the actual latches themselves. If the latch doesn't lock closed, the lights will stay on. I had this problem with one of my liftgate latches so I disconnected that switch until I got a new latch.

Once the ignition is turned off, control of the lights goes thru the BCM and a timer to turn them off after you close the door. They are probably right about the BCM but you can turn them off in the mean time with the dash control, thus saving your battery overnight.

That's all I've got. Good luck and welcome to CF, BTW.

bigwave

I did finally figure mine out also. It was a double deal. One was the rear hatch switch on the glass. I just disconnected it, the glass almost never gets opened anyway and the hatch one works fine. 2nd) The PO had disabled the factory alarm by perminantly grounding it. Which sent a signal to the BCM like a key or Fob was constantly being used to unlock the doors. So after finding that wire and unhooking it all worked well. Until my son took it out to eat and the alarm went off, not having any key Fob and the switch in the door being broke, as I now discovered, he couldn't get it to shut off. So, I just reached up under the dash and touched the "disarm" or formerly shorted wire to something metal and the alarm shut off. And now, all was clear as to why my lights would not shut off. 1) the bad glass hatch switch 2) The bad disarm switches in the front doors. So, I order a few key FOBs off of ebay for 6 bucks, paid the dealer 20 to program them and BAM everything works as it should and the key fob does arm and dis-arm the alarm as it should. So, next step was; what to do if key fob fails? So I went to local auto parts store and bought a small push button starter, like for a lawn mower. I hooked it into the alarm dis-arm wire and put it in a hard to see but REALLY simple to get as spot under the dash. Basically I made a "manual" alarm dis-arm switch instead of tearing the doors all back apart for the 4th time and attempting to reach in and replace all the key switches and it works great. So, if the key fob fails you can just use the key to unlock the door and yes, the alarm will sound but only for about 1 sec or less until you press the newly installed "dis-arm" button. You can also lock the doors manually and the alarm will not arm in the first place. Now on to the next 8 problems with this ZJ, I bought it on the cheap knowing I had many things to do to it and I've learned allot so far with much to go.

bigwave

Thanks for the reply, I'm now waiting for my "neo wedge" lights to show up so I can fix all the dash lights that are burnt out. Those little dudes were not easy to find and the dealer had no clue.