Electrical issues

[Shandara]

I own 1998 that I picked several years ago and have done quite a bit of work on, including adding factory AC, cruise, intermittent wipers and so on. a couple of months back my clockspring started giving me grief I bought a new one and replaced it , a Dorman unit. everything seems good. 2 weeks ago I started having the airbag light stay illuminated for up to 10 minutes or so before going off. horn and cruise are good and I pulled the clock spring and tested the continuity through it on all circuits it seems to be fine. At the same time I replaced the clock spring I replaced the heater motor, I had bought one when doing the AC planning to get to at the same time but it magical disappeared in my shop, recently found it again and decided to do it while I was out there. shortly after the airbag light started acting up my blower started to only run on the second highest setting, I didn't think too much of it and bought the resistor when I replaced it I checked the plug and it was good and other than some dust the old resistor it looked OK as well. I did get all my setting speeds back for a couple of days. Now I am back to just high speed on the fan. I took the fan switch apart cleaned it inside and out reassembled it and I am still in the same boat. Just the other day I noticed that while backing into my driveway the fan even on the highest setting cuts out when I put the jeep in reverse and as a added bonus I do not have my reverse lights. The bulbs are good and so is the fuse.

I am getting the gut feeling that this is all related and possibly a short or bad ground. I have done multiple searches and can not find anything to really help me out. I am hoping someone on here may have run across something similar and can point in a direction I have not considered yet. So the cliff note version is:

-the airbag light stays on randomly for an extended period when I fire the jeep up.
-The fan only has high speed, new motor,resistor and both plugs look fine.
-The fan cuts out when I put the jeep in reverse.
-No reverse lights, bulbs test good and the fuse is good and I have swapped them out to be sure.

I did remove the battery and computer when changing the blower motor, I have since removed the computer again and checked it over along with the wiring I do not see any damage or anything out of the ordinary. And yes I do know that the fan went from running only on the 2nd highest to the highest speed in the process, it is weird and I probably should have dug deeper into it before replacing the resistor.

 

[Shandara]

I have decided to update this so anyone with a somewhat similar problem will be able to see what I found to resolve it.

Sometime after my previous post i had an additional issue popup while on the way to town which pointed me in the direction I needed. When cornering to the right the tach and speedo would go dead, occasionally when doing a hard left turn they would return along with the Hvac fan.

That got me looking in the dash area and I found a wire tap into the Headlight dimmer switch wiring. In particular the dimmer switch low bean output (VT/WH) wire. A blue crimp on wire tap was used (see picture below) to run in a yellow wire which had been cut off at some point leaving a small amount of exposed wire floating around in the dash. In addition there is a tape on plastic wire harness support that is suppose to mount to the right side of the steering column which was not attached anymore and half the tape to the wiring harness was missing allowing for movement of the harness.

I removed the wire and crimp, repaired the low beam output wire and re-taped and mounted the wiring harness. I have now put 500 miles on the TJ without any of the previous problems resurfacing. I am 99% sure the problem has been resolved. And it is really good having the A/C back considering it has been averaging 95F to 98F most days.

 

[txbemis69]

good job finding and resolving your issues. wiring can be a nightmare sometimes.