Electrical 81 CJ7 courtesy lights without a dome light

[Garmadon]

Two week old CJ7 owner here that’s a bonafide novice but super excited about this journey! Courtesy lights on my 81 do not respond at all to headlight switch/dimmer, sockets however do have 12V running to them. Picture of wiring is attached and includes two cut wires in the rear that I suppose went to a long lost dome light (topless now). Two questions before I tackle this…

QUESTION #1: I’ve come to believe that the courtesy lights and the dome light were both grounded to a switch in the dome light itself. If so, shouldn’t my first attempt to get the courtesy lights working be to simply add a grounded switch/connection to the two exposed wires in the rear?

QUESTION #2: Ive also come to believe that all the orange wires for lighting are connected to one another, and that most of the grounds associated with the light bulbs comes from the sockets that hold them and being connected to a gauge. If this is true, is it a waste of time to troubleshoot the courtesy lights while so many others are bulbless and hanging loose not ground (like those pictured for the speedo, oil, and volt gauges)?

DETAILS: Overall, based off what I can see under the dash and on wiring diagrams, the entire wiring system appears to be fairly well intact and not heavily altered. Headlights, running lights, turn signals, and highbeams work fine. Inside the vehicle the indicator lights work fine (and respond to the dimmer) but every other interior socket came to me bubbles and disconnected from the gauges (I have confirmed with multimeter that they are receiving 12V though).

Thanks for your patience and help!
-Allan

 

[Garmadon]

SOLVED: I’ve just been educated by someone with plenty more experience than me that (1) courtesy lights do not dim and (2) that the courtesy lights can only be turned on after the rheostat “clicks”… I had no idea there was a “click” level.

Silly, yes, learning, absolutely

 

[boney]

I have an 83. Not sure if that makes a difference. The orange wires should all be connected to the same dome light fuse- as should the under hood light. The darker colored wires, they look black and blue (to the right PS courtesy light) on my car, should be grounded through the headlight switch, when you turn the knob. To my knowledge the wires in the back of your tub should turn on and off with the headlight switch only.

 

[TSB8C]

Welcome to CJ ownership! You've found a great community here. You are correct on the courtesy lights. They have +12 always applied and the headlight switch connects the ground to turn them on. So you could simply ground that wire to test if they light up or not. This is a separate circuit from the dash indicator lights with the orange wire(s) however. So treat them as two different issues (unless the headlight switch itself is bad). When you turn the headlight switch (not pull/push) to the point where it clicks, that should connect the grounding wire for the courtesy/dome lights. This ground is achieved through the mounting of the switch in the dash - another design weakness you can address with a physical ground wire. When you pull the headlight switch to the first position, that should connect +12V to the dash indicator lights, along with the parking and tail lights as well. Then you can turn the switch to operate the variable resistor at the front (the "spring" looking mechanism at the front of the switch), that varies the +12V to allow adjustment of the brightness of the dash indicators. Because this is an exposed part of the switch, this is also a known area for problems as it gets corroded and creates a poor connection. All the dash light indicators are "daisy-chained" together with butt splices in the wiring harness on the orange wires that go to each. These butt splices are also a known issue that should be eliminated and/or soldered to eliminate bad connections in the poor crimps from the factory.

 

[Garmadon]

I have an 83. Not sure if that makes a difference. The orange wires should all be connected to the same dome light fuse- as should the under hood light. The darker colored wires, they look black and blue (to the right PS courtesy light) on my car, should be grounded through the headlight switch, when you turn the knob. To my knowledge the wires in the back of your tub should turn on and off with the headlight switch only.

Good to know, thanks, boney!
After getting the two courtesy lights on, my next plane is to add two more to the rear seats. Knowing that the wires in the back operate with the headlight switch identifies them as the perfect wires to do this of off.

 

[TSB8C]

Good to know, thanks, boney!
After getting the two courtesy lights on, my next plane is to add two more to the rear seats. Knowing that the wires in the back operate with the headlight switch identifies them as the perfect wires to do this of off.

And consider a dome light too. I have a soft top, so chose to replace the review mirror on the windshield with one that has map lights in it. I wired the map lights to the courtesy lamps so they all come on together, or the map lights can be turned on/off independently as well. Here's that post: Map Light Install

 

[Garmadon]

Welcome to CJ ownership! You've found a great community here. You are correct on the courtesy lights. They have +12 always applied and the headlight switch connects the ground to turn them on. So you could simply ground that wire to test if they light up or not. This is a separate circuit from the dash indicator lights with the orange wire(s) however. So treat them as two different issues (unless the headlight switch itself is bad). When you turn the headlight switch (not pull/push) to the point where it clicks, that should connect the grounding wire for the courtesy/dome lights. This ground is achieved through the mounting of the switch in the dash - another design weakness you can address with a physical ground wire. When you pull the headlight switch to the first position, that should connect +12V to the dash indicator lights, along with the parking and tail lights as well. Then you can turn the switch to operate the variable resistor at the front (the "spring" looking mechanism at the front of the switch), that varies the +12V to allow adjustment of the brightness of the dash indicators. Because this is an exposed part of the switch, this is also a known area for problems as it gets corroded and creates a poor connection. All the dash light indicators are "daisy-chained" together with butt splices in the wiring harness on the orange wires that go to each. These butt splices are also a known issue that should be eliminated and/or soldered to eliminate bad connections in the poor crimps from the factory.

View attachment 102303

Makes sense, thank you, I will definitely look into adding a ground wire. Also will take a good look at the daisy-chain (now that my first electrical hurdle, switch operation, had been overcome) as I turn my attention to the dash lights!

 

[TSB8C]

There are a few mods to consider to make your CJ's electrical more reliable. Soldering the crimped butt splices in the harness, adding physical ground wires, adding relays to the headlight wiring circuits, LED light conversions (inside and out both), adding dome/map lights, etc. Lots of fun times to come.

 

[Garmadon]

There are a few mods to consider to make your CJ's electrical more reliable. Soldering the crimped butt splices in the harness, adding physical ground wires, adding relays to the headlight wiring circuits, LED light conversions (inside and out both), adding dome/map lights, etc. Lots of fun times to come.

I followed the link to your rear view mirror… love it, and perfect timing as my wife and I were talking last night about whether or not we should put one in. She said “yes”, sooooo….

 

[Turbogus]

Also, centralizing your grounds to a buss bar connected to the negative battery post is one of the best, most rewarding electrical mods one can do. When I ran grounds on my '78 and accessory grounds from the Speedometer gauge cluster everything started working after years of being inoperative.

 

[TSB8C]

I followed the link to your rear view mirror… love it, and perfect timing as my wife and I were talking last night about whether or not we should put one in. She said “yes”, sooooo….

The wife usually right, so good luck.