I took two cheapskate, plastic fog light housings, removed the innards and installed two LED lights. I mounted them on the plastic inner cover of the liftgate. I ran power from the cargo area light (pink wire) to the lights and grounded the lights to the metal liftgate. I controlled the lights with a switch in one of the light housings. The switch was in the ground wire. With the liftgate up, the lights illuminated the cargo area, and area under the tailgate. Provided great light for working after dark.







Couple years later, the liftgate started acting up, didn’t want to unlatch. I was easily able to fix the problem from information found on this forum. But when I pulled the plastic cover to get at the latch and the first thing I see is the bolts/hollow threaded rod holding the lights to the plastic cover looked like the nuts had been welded to the bolt by an amateur welder.



Didn’t have time or energy to mess with it at the time so I cut the hot wire coming in from the cargo area light and capped it off and removed the rest of the wiring.

As part of my headliner refurb, I want to fix the problem because the lights are really handy.. Disassembly showed there were no bare spots or breaks in the wiring. There was no metal to metal contact between the light and the liftgate. The light housing and the liftgate cover are both plastic. The hollow threaded rod that holds them together doesn’t touch any metal. The internet says switch in the ground wire is okay.

My only thought is a bad ground maybe? It appears none of the electrical devices in the liftgate are grounded to the liftgate. They are connected to the body/frame. But what caused the damage to the threaded rod/mounting bolts? How do I wire this to prevent a re-occurrence? Is switch on the ground wire not a good idea? Should I use the existing ground wire from liftgate to frame? Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated. I would hate to come out one day and find my Jeep a smoldering hulk because I thought I knew what I was doing but didn't.

 

It looks like there was some arcing going on . If you are going to run a constant hot wire to it make sure it is well insulated and will not short to any metal it could of happened when it got a little wet or moist , I've seen some wire insulation let that happen .