Back up lights - 1998 Jeep Cherokee Sport 4WD

Before I go spending a ridiculous amount of money on a neutral safety
switch, I want to know if that is what I actually need. I have no
difficulties in starting my car. My only problem is that my back-up
lights do not work when I go into reverse. I have already replaced
the bulb. Do I need a new neutral safety switch, or just the back up
light switch?

txksa wrote:
> Before I go spending a ridiculous amount of money on a neutral safety
> switch, I want to know if that is what I actually need. I have no
> difficulties in starting my car. My only problem is that my back-up
> lights do not work when I go into reverse. I have already replaced
> the bulb. Do I need a new neutral safety switch, or just the back up
> light switch?
>

Your switch could just be slightly out of adjustment.

Someone else recently posted about a failure in the power 'to' the
neutral switch that controls the back up lights. He ended up hotwiring
them.

Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00
88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's
Canadian Off Road Trips Photos: Non members can still view!
Jan/06 http://www.imagestation.com/album/pi...?id=2115147590
(More Off Road album links at bottom of the view page)

On 22 mar, 14:35, Mike Romain > wrote:
> txksa wrote:
> > Before I go spending a ridiculous amount of money on a neutral safety
> > switch, I want to know if that is what I actually need. I have no
> > difficulties in starting my car. My only problem is that my back-up
> > lights donotwork when I go into reverse. I have already replaced
> > the bulb. Do I need a new neutral safety switch, or just the back up
> > light switch?
>
> Your switch could just be slightly out of adjustment.
>
> Someone else recently posted about a failure in the power 'to' the
> neutral switch that controls the back up lights. He ended up hotwiring
> them.

It was me who did the hotwiring.
- I checked first if the wiring was okay from beyond the safety
switch. => wires were okay
- then I checked the resistance between the "reverse" pins on the plug
linked to the safety switch => safety swith was okay in reverse mode
- and then I checked if some voltage was available on the pin that is
supposed to be hooked to the battery. There was nothing therefore I
made some repair to connect directly this pin to the + of the
battery.

It's not very complicated to do and it does not require many tools but
it takes some times to figure the right colors, the right pins as
manual like Haynes and Chilton do not necessarily have the right color
code. The most sensitive info is to get the pinouts of the safety
switch if you don't want to remove it... The funny story is after
that. I realized some other things that were not working like cruise
control were repaired... I don't see how this is linked but I won't
complain about that.

Lionel