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K Suspension Harness Upgrade Fog light brights stay on issues

1639 Views 7 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  98JeepClassic
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98 Jeep Cherokee Classic. I've looked, seen the Jumper issue on KSuspensions website, and even called them, they never heard of a similar issue, and I even searched the web and on this forum. Seen some similar issues on here, but no working results. If there is please direct me to thread.

I got the fog lights issue. Seen on Ksuspension web site to splice red wire from OEM driver side harness to blue wire on new harness.

Still no go.

Only difference is that I have my fog light switch (in cab) hard wired to always ON position, cause kept going thru switches years ago with switch going bad. Never any issues. Is just like the switch is always turned on, but via wire, not switch.

So when I turn ON my lights, the fog lights come on also. I have the Haynes manual also for reference, but lots of models to look for in the electrical section.

So with harness up grade, HI beams stay on, FOG lights go OFF, and indicator on dash for hi beams stay ON also with Jeep NOT running and head light switch fully pushed in and in OFF position.

I have to remove the jumper wire from headlight harness in order for headlights to turn off, also with the hi beams still on, when slowly turn off or on headlight switch, hear a buzzing sound.

The FOG light switch shouldn't be an issue, since is like switch is physically turned ON and normal.

Thanks for any pointers and or other places to look. Otherwise the harness is useless. Hopefully can brain storm the issue and try different debugging techniques.

Am an engineer by nature, and have plenty of time to try different things, and measure different voltages with my Fluke multi meter.

The OEM driver side harness has 4 wires, red, smallerish redish orange, violet or purple, and black. Haven't found the section in Haynes manual yet that goes with my 98 Jeep Classic. So many variations.

Would defiantly help if could find right page that had fog lights and relays and headlight all on same electrical diagram, but hopefully for my model.

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The Fog lights are the issue. First, either disconnect the extra wires, or fix the switch.


Then read this from another 4x4 Forum:


If you have stock fog lights on a 97+ and upgrade your harness in a manner that uses the factory wiring to trigger some new relays, your fog lights will have and/or cause issues unless you make some additional modifications to address the problem. It doesn't matter if you use a plug and play harness like the eautoworks or if you split your harness open and completely strip out all the extra factory wiring. The factory fog circuit will cause your new lighting system to not work properly.

If you do nothing, your headlights will work as mentioned above. Low beams will be fine, but after you turn on your high beams, they will not turn off again until you completely turn off your headlights. Big issue here is that when you switch back to low beams, both the high beam and low beam filament will be remain powered causing your bulbs to endure 115W worth of heat output instead of the 55W or 60W that they are designed for. From what I've read this can cause them to overheat and burn out within minutes.

So what is happening? If you look at the driver's side headlight plug (and you have factory fogs) you will notice there are two red wires coming out of one of the terminals. One is a small 18g Red wire which sadly is the stock high beam wire. The other is an even smaller 20g Red wire which ties into Fog Lamp Relay #1 in the PDC. Please keep in mind that Fog Lamp Relay #1 is NOT used to provide battery power to the fog lights the way we commonly use them with aftermarket lighting. It is located before the switch and simply cuts power to the Fog Light Switch unless the Headlight Switch and Beam Selector Switch are in the proper positions. It does this as law dictates that you can't run your high beams and fogs at the same time. Though not a problem here in CA, I've read that states with safety inspection programs will fail your vehicle if the lights don't operate this way.

When your Headlight Switch is off, the fog light relay coil receives no power and therefore won't allow your fog lights to come on. When your Headlight Switch is turned on, one side of the relay's coil receives 12V which causes the relay to activate and send power through to your Fog Light Switch. When you turn your high beams on, 12V is sent out to your headlight socket via the Beam Selector Switch, and then is sent back to the other side of the relay coil via the skinny Red wire on that shared terminal. This brings both sides of the relay coil to 12V, thus causing it to deactivate and turn off the Fog Light Switch. Weird huh? The factory designed it so that the relay is off with both sides at 0V, on with one side at 12V, and then off again with both sides at 12V. While it makes perfect sense now, this is the part that was confusing me.

So what's the problem then? Well, it turns out that even when the high beams are off, there is still approximately 5V on that skinny Red trigger wire for some reason which I still don't understand. While this is obviously not a problem in the factory configuration, it becomes a problem when you are using the high beam wire (which is directly tied into the skinny Red wire) to trigger your aftermarket high beam relay. A typical automotive relay requires approximately 8V to activate and needs to drop to somewhere below 1-5V to deactivate. When you first turn on your lights there is no problem because the phantom 5V is not enough to activate your new high beam relay. When you turn your high beams on, your new relay gets 12V and kicks on. When you go to turn off your high beams, the phantom 5V keeps the new relay from deactivating and voilà, your high beams are stuck on...

So how do we fix this?

1. Don't use your high beams, new lights are bright enough anyways (OK...)
2. If you have to use your high beams, turn your headlights off briefly to get them turn off (PITA)
3. Pull various fuses (lose your fog lights)
4. Pull the fog lamp relay (again, lose your fog lights)
5. Modify the fog lamp relay (fog lights work, but won't cut out when your high beams are on?)
6. Install a jumper in place of the fog light relay (fog lights work, but switch is always hot?)


Cut the 20g Red Fog Lamp Relay #1 ground/trigger wire at the back of the driver's side headlight plug. Extend this wire using your preferred method so that it is long enough to reach your new aftermarket high beam relay. Splice it into the 87 pin (output) of your new high beam relay. If you have two 87's (which is ideal), either one is OK. Do not however use 87a if your relay has it!

Your high beams will now turn off when they're supposed to, your fog lights will turn on/off when they're supposed to, and your low beams will continue to work as they're supposed to.
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The Fog lights are the issue. First, either disconnect the extra wires, or fix the switch.

Then read this from another 4x4 Forum:

If you have stock fog lights on a 97+ and upgrade your harness in a manner that uses the factory wiring to trigger some new relays, your fog lights will have and/or cause issues unless you make some additional modifications to address the problem. It doesn't matter if you use a plug and play harness like the eautoworks or if you split your harness open and completely strip out all the extra factory wiring like I did. The factory fog circuit will cause your new lighting system to not work properly.

If you do nothing, your headlights will work as mentioned above. Low beams will be fine, but after you turn on your high beams, they will not turn off again until you completely turn off your headlights. Big issue here is that when you switch back to low beams, both the high beam and low beam filament will be remain powered causing your bulbs to endure 115W worth of heat output instead of the 55W or 60W that they are designed for. From what I've read this can cause them to overheat and burn out within minutes.

So what is happening? If you look at the driver's side headlight plug (and you have factory fogs) you will notice there are two red wires coming out of one of the terminals. One is a small 18g Red wire which sadly is the stock high beam wire. The other is an even smaller 20g Red wire which ties into Fog Lamp Relay #1 in the PDC. Please keep in mind that Fog Lamp Relay #1 is NOT used to provide battery power to the fog lights the way we commonly use them with aftermarket lighting. It is located before the switch and simply cuts power to the Fog Light Switch unless the Headlight Switch and Beam Selector Switch are in the proper positions. It does this as law dictates that you can't run your high beams and fogs at the same time. Though not a problem here in CA, I've read that states with safety inspection programs will fail your vehicle if the lights don't operate this way.

When your Headlight Switch is off, the fog light relay coil receives no power and therefore won't allow your fog lights to come on. When your Headlight Switch is turned on, one side of the relay's coil receives 12V which causes the relay to activate and send power through to your Fog Light Switch. When you turn your high beams on, 12V is sent out to your headlight socket via the Beam Selector Switch, and then is sent back to the other side of the relay coil via the skinny Red wire on that shared terminal. This brings both sides of the relay coil to 12V, thus causing it to deactivate and turn off the Fog Light Switch. Weird huh? The factory designed it so that the relay is off with both sides at 0V, on with one side at 12V, and then off again with both sides at 12V. While it makes perfect sense now, this is the part that was confusing me.

So what's the problem then? Well, it turns out that even when the high beams are off, there is still approximately 5V on that skinny Red trigger wire for some reason which I still don't understand. While this is obviously not a problem in the factory configuration, it becomes a problem when you are using the high beam wire (which is directly tied into the skinny Red wire) to trigger your aftermarket high beam relay. A typical automotive relay requires approximately 8V to activate and needs to drop to somewhere below 1-5V to deactivate. When you first turn on your lights there is no problem because the phantom 5V is not enough to activate your new high beam relay. When you turn your high beams on, your new relay gets 12V and kicks on. When you go to turn off your high beams, the phantom 5V keeps the new relay from deactivating and voilà, your high beams are stuck on...

So how do we fix this?

1. Don't use your high beams, new lights are bright enough anyways (OK...)
2. If you have to use your high beams, turn your headlights off briefly to get them turn off (PITA)
3. Pull various fuses (lose your fog lights)
4. Pull the fog lamp relay (again, lose your fog lights)
5. Modify the fog lamp relay (fog lights work, but won't cut out when your high beams are on?)
6. Install a jumper in place of the fog light relay (fog lights work, but switch is always hot?)

Cut the 20g Red Fog Lamp Relay #1 ground/trigger wire at the back of the driver's side headlight plug. Extend this wire using your preferred method so that it is long enough to reach your new aftermarket high beam relay. Splice it into the 87 pin (output) of your new high beam relay. If you have two 87's (which is ideal), either one is OK. Do not however use 87a if your relay has it!

Your high beams will now turn off when they're supposed to, your fog lights will turn on/off when they're supposed to, and your low beams will continue to work as they're supposed to.
Thanks !

So I must of read too deep. "Cut" the red wire, and not just splice it to the Ksuspension driver side blue brights wire per their site?
I basically just spliced them together, with red wire not cut, but removed some insulation and same for blue brights wire, but didn't "cut" the red wire in half.

"Cut the 20g Red Fog Lamp Relay #1 ground/trigger wire at the back of the driver's side headlight plug (there's 2 red wires, the fog light one is usually the smaller one, confirm with test light). Extend this wire so that it is long enough to reach your new aftermarket harness high beam port. Splice it into the new harness Blue wire for high beams.
You are now fixed and ready to click between high and low whenever you would like!"
CJ7-Tim, I hope you copy and pasted that from a previous post of yours. That would take me 20 minutes to type. Good info as usual.
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CJ7-Tim, I hope you copy and pasted that from a previous post of yours. That would take me 20 minutes to type. Good info as usual.
Still no go. Copied from KSuspension web site. Still a no go. Cut red wire, turned off fog lights, and same. Ohmed separately red to 87 pin on new relays and they had continuity to other relay pins. And same with blue wire. And removed hard wired fog switch so fogs are off. Still same issue. Driver side blue/bright wire on pin 87 is connected to driver side bright wire. Cut red and connected to blue wire... which is connected to pin 87 and still have issue.

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Got it, but FOGs are OFF when brights are ON and FOGs ON when brights are OFF

CJ7-Tim, I hope you copy and pasted that from a previous post of yours. That would take me 20 minutes to type. Good info as usual.
Think I got it ! Brights turn off now, and function properly. I had to use the other more orange colored wire.

But... are fog lights still supposed to turn OFF when brights are on ? Think I read an article searching for my issue that mentioned FOGs are supposed to turn off with brights on. I'll have to look again to make sure.

Other wise, re-connected the previously cut red wire back to original connector, cut the orange and connected to pin 87, or the spliced into the purple brights wire, and all works except the FOG lights turn OFF when brights are ON, but FOG lights turn back ON when turn
Brights OFF.

Need to check if that is the way it's supposed to be naturally.
As built from the Jeep factory, the fog lamps are supposed to shutoff when the high beams are ON.


Be sure to solder all those connections and then make them waterproof.
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As built from the Jeep factory, the fog lamps are supposed to shutoff when the high beams are ON.

Be sure to solder all those connections and then make them waterproof.
Thanks and will do !
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