General Update:
I suppose I should update this so people don't start to think this Jeep is going to sit in my garage forever all taken apart and wasting its life. I haven't worked on the YJ much recently as I got my new truck in October and have mostly been focused on it. For that one I still want to buy two bumpers, lighting for each bumper, and I need a regeared front diff to match the rear regear I did. Other than that, that truck is basically done besides maintenance. Those last few items are pretty expensive and long lead time, so I'm kind of focusing on the YJ again.
Where I left off last I was taking my dash apart to take the harness and customize it and grab ignition and battery power from it as well as triggers from the high beam, parking lamp, parking brake, and some other circuits. The whole purpose of that was to power a switch panel I built to go in the radio slot since I moved my radio to the console. I got about halfway through that project and was getting tired of all the custom, on-the-fly wiring I was having to do in my head on the Jeep, standing in the garage outside the Jeep reaching in.
What I always wanted to do in the last few years was grab a factory dash harness and front end lighting harness from eBay that came from a Sahara/Renegage. The reason for those is they would have the built in fog light circuits. Jeep was lazy and if you had a base model, they stripped you of the fog light connector. If you had a Sahara, Renegade, or Canadian base model, then you either got the fogs or you got no fogs but at least got the wiring groundwork and they just left all the plugs unused. For me I had nothing, having an American SE.
I was in the process of building in fog light function, high beam driving light function, backup lights, and a daytime running light cutoff switch. The fogs were going to be enabled by the parking lamp circuit, so I could leave their switch on 24/7 and operate them by the headlights switch. The driving lights were going to be triggered automatically by the high beam circuit and I could also turn them on manually by the switch. The backup lights were going to be the same as driving lights, only triggered by reverse (still could turn on manually via switch) and finally, the daytime running light switch was going to be my way to manually cut off my ignition powered daytime running light. Well.....I FINALLY found a dash harness that had the fog wiring built in, and I also found a front end wiring harness that had the fog circuits as well.
Since the dash harness featured fogs, that eliminates the need for one of my switches, the fog switch. The driving lights I don't even have yet, so doing a bunch of wiring work for them at this point doesn't make any sense. The backup lights I initially wired straight to reverse....this still works perfectly fine and I have very little need for manually turning them on. The daytime running light cutoff, well I don't need a switch for that, I decided to build it into the harness and have the parking brake operate it. So basically I decided I no longer need the switch panel for the time being. Eventually I will, but not for now, and I will have freed up what would have been two of the switches.
So I ordered the two harnesses I found for a total of $100 from eBay. I received the dash harness first. It is very clean. There was only one damaged wire, which is a signal wire for the AC. It was only chafed, not damaged. Must have been rubbed against some metal before. I cut out the damaged section and spliced back together with a piece of new wire. All good. I don't even know if I'll ever add AC back to utilize that wire but just in case, it's fixed.
This harness was really nice and I did not want to immediately start hacking it all up. I still have my stocker I can do that to. The only other things I needed to do in order to use it as-is were create a branch for the radio wiring to extend the wires out to my console radio, and I also needed to splice in a resistor to dim down my LED dash bulb for the heater control. I did so the night I received it, and everything worked great. It was simple enough to splice in the radio wires just using an adapter plug plugged into the radio harness. This leaves everything intact for the future. I wrapped the wiring in tape and zip tied it all the way down the harness. I ended the wires right next to the big cartridge style connectors that connect the dash harness to the tub/rear lighting harness. I ordered a Deutsch connector kit that I will use to connect the radio wiring to the radio wiring I already ran to the console.
I folded the radio wiring into a U-turn and zip tied it back to itself to aim it back towards the main harness for easier routing.
Got these awesome metal tooth zip ties which work really well. Never heard of them before. Used them very liberally to secure the harness start to finish, ensuring it will never fall apart in the dash.
For the heater bulb, I spliced in a 220 ohm resistor. The only purpose for this was that stock bulbs melt the heater control, so I wanted to run an LED. The LED's I use are too bright and run hot as well. Using a 220 ohm resistor out of my resistor assortment dims the bulb nicely and keeps the heat away too.
While I had the harness lying on the table in front of me, I decided to make one last change, which I mentioned earlier: the daytime running light automation. My idea for a daytime running light consists of something that kicks on when you flip the key to run or accessory. The problem with that is there is no way to turn it off if you want to idle dark at night (stealth mode style). I had the exact same problem in my truck, which was annoying for sure. The daytime running light on the truck is super bright and dims when the headlights are on. So my only options for night time on it were to turn the headlights off (DRL then goes super bright), or flip the lights to parking lights and still have everything but fogs/headlights on. I hated that so what I did was took a 5 pin relay, connected the relay coil and the power terminal to ignition power, grounded the relay coil to the parking brake wire in the truck, and then the output was connected to 87A. This way the power flows straight through the relay normally, but when you pull the parking brake, the relay cuts the daytime running light off. I took the same concept to the YJ. I had the harness out in front of me, so there was no reason not to. I'd rather it be automated by the brake rather than a manual switch anyways.
The YJ dash harness features a "radio illumination relay" which has an ignition power wire, parking lamp trigger, ground, and two wires that go to the stock radio. The purpose for it is to feed the stock radio full 12V power during the day so you can see the screen/buttons, and then it switches the radio to the dash 1-12V variable power so that it can be dimmer at night if desired. The relay triggers when you turn on the parking lights.
I took that relay and repurposed it for my needs and plugged in a new relay for best reliability. I snipped the ignition power wire and spliced it to two wires: the same one it already was (power through the relay) and to the relay coil wire. This way ignition will trigger the relay. I re-ran the ground wire over to the parking brake so that the parking brake will ground the relay when I set it. One of the wires going to the radio I cut and sealed, and the other I spliced to a longer wire that will splice to my existing daytime running light circuit.
So where this leaves me is that my new dash harness is set up to power my radio in the console, it will work fully like stock besides the radio, it can automatically disable my daytime running lights with the parking brake, and I can run an LED in the heater at comfortable brightness. That is all I need to do for the dash harness.
I went ahead and installed it yesterday, but I am still waiting for the Deutsch connector so I can actually hook it up to the radio extension I made previously. I also found a hardtop harness with the defroster circuit, so I will be dealing with that too. I don't want to button up the dash until I have all the wiring mods in place.
So what about the switch panel project?
Well, for the time being it is not needed. I've now eliminated 2 of the 4 switches that would go on it. I can't even think of anything I would want the other two switches for. Maybe winch operation? It usually takes two dash switches to run a winch...one to run the winch, and another to disable the one that runs the winch as a safety. I could maybe use the two leftover switches for that. For now, I'm going to install the switch panel anyways simply so it can cover the hole. It will just have a bunch of unused switches installed, no big deal.
Eventually the plan is a Double D Fab dash. Something like the below as an example. When I get to that point, I will have to go all custom gauges and everything. From there forward, I will have to build myself very custom dash wiring to make it all work, so that's why I'm glad I'm driving on the eBay harness so that I can doctor up the old harness for the custom job. When I get the custom dash, I will integrate all my switches into it. Until that point, I'm perfectly good with what I've got.
So that is what my holdup was, and it's over with. I waited all that time lazing out over a job I'm not even doing yet. Oh well. This will get me back on the road.
we’ll see. I’m just glad it starts up after all this time, good oil pressure with the new pump, and it sounds just like it always did. Revved it up and it sounded exactly as I remember from all the years of driving it.
