WT Forums

Do any of you know of a good jeep help website? I have tried two different ones, http://www.jeepz.com/ and http://www.jeepforum.com with no success in getting help for an issue I am having with a 94 Jeep Cherokee. I am trying to find a website with a REAL JEEP MECHANIC on it?

Now if any of you are no sh!t REAL smart on jeeps then let me know and I will go through the whole sorry story however if you are nothing more than an average mechanic then chances are better than good you can't help. Hint, it is an electrical problem of epic proportions.

Fender, the early Cherokees were notorious for electrical problems. Most of the issues stemmed from poorly constructed main harnesses, bad crimps, poor grounds and corrossion. Good luck with it, I know people that have just given up and sold the vehicle as is.

OC

Well I finally got the Jeep running a while back. It turns out the computer had gone bad. R2 the computer and the thing fired right up.

Fast Forward to last week and the more problems. The horn started blowing all by itself. There was a smoke inside the cabin and had to disconnect the battery to keep it from burning to the ground.

I think this must be what you were talking about OC? It has to be a short to ground somewhere in the wiring harness to cause this crap?

Sure is Fender. Couple of good places to start looking are where the steering column harness exits the top of the steering column..lots of movement in that area because of the brake pedal and the key is the horn blowing by itself. The other place to look is where the main harness comes through the firewall.

Now, one of the ways you can troubleshoot the problem without burning the vehicle up is to put a load between the main accessory supply wire and the battery. This is going to sound complicated but it's not so bear with me. Locate the accessory supply wire, it'll be tied directly to the positive side of the battery, either at the battery itself or at the starter solenoid where the positive battery cable attaches. Disconnect the wire and find yourself something to act as a load..I use an old headlight because I can easily see when it's on or off. You want to put the load in series with the wire (wish I could post a diagram) so you'll need some clip leads. What you should have when you're done is the supply wire connected to one side of the light, the other side of the light connected to where you took the supply wire off. Hook the battery back up and if, in my case, the headlight lights up, there's a short. The load acts as a current limiting device by dropping the voltage across it. Now, go into the cabin of the vehicle and start moving wire bundles, you may have to get a little \"vigorous\" but if they're good, it won't bother anything. When you find an area that causes the headlight to go out, you've found the short..repair as required. Simple, yes?

OC