95 Cherokee weird electrical problems
snolex
10-19-2009, 01:55 AM
Okay, so when I first got this car two years and 40,000 miles ago I put an aftermarket radio in. Sometimes if the bass was too high the front left speaker would short out taking the whole sound system with it (head unit still worked but no speakers) a few kicks always got it going again. This could be prevented by doing one of two things. A) Don't use the a/c or heat at all. Or b) if you need the heat cracking the window a little prevented the failure (non-electric windows). Also, the lights behind the dash for the AC/Heat work intermittently and will come back on if you smack the top of the dash (this has continued since the beginning).
Now it's acting very peculiar. With the car running I have two options, heat with no fan, or my radio. I've tried cracking the window and kicking the speaker as well, no luck everything just shuts off immediately when the switch goes from 'off' to 'max' (the head unit shuts down completely and asks me to remove it from the car as if the ignition was turned off) on the AC slider and immediately comes back on when going back to 'off' . If I switch the ignition to accessory everything works. While poking around the fuse box underneath the dash near my hood pop I noticed there are 4 small wiring harnesses that are not plugged into anything and as far as I know never have been. Two are male and two are female but none of them will connect to each other.
If I remember correctly we used a shared ground that was not through the wiring harness on the stereo and my theory has always been that the sliders clip the wires and short out that ground but it's never been a big enough problem to worry about.
So to recap this is what happens
Car running
-Radio works with AC set to off
-heat works with no fan but shuts off the radio as soon as it is turned on
Ignition on ACC
-Radio works
-AC fan works
Now it's acting very peculiar. With the car running I have two options, heat with no fan, or my radio. I've tried cracking the window and kicking the speaker as well, no luck everything just shuts off immediately when the switch goes from 'off' to 'max' (the head unit shuts down completely and asks me to remove it from the car as if the ignition was turned off) on the AC slider and immediately comes back on when going back to 'off' . If I switch the ignition to accessory everything works. While poking around the fuse box underneath the dash near my hood pop I noticed there are 4 small wiring harnesses that are not plugged into anything and as far as I know never have been. Two are male and two are female but none of them will connect to each other.
If I remember correctly we used a shared ground that was not through the wiring harness on the stereo and my theory has always been that the sliders clip the wires and short out that ground but it's never been a big enough problem to worry about.
So to recap this is what happens
Car running
-Radio works with AC set to off
-heat works with no fan but shuts off the radio as soon as it is turned on
Ignition on ACC
-Radio works
-AC fan works
New87jeeper
03-06-2010, 10:57 AM
All I can say is to check your ground wires and check fuses just to check them and go through the pain of one by one cheking different components by tracing wires etc to make sure they arent miswired or there are no bere wires that might be shorting or getting hot against something. Good Luck
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