You have a Jeep Wrangler, if you’re reading my articles, you probably at least have some interest in off-roading, and maybe I’m making assumptions here, but you may have at least considered taking your doors off. If you’ve tried this on a TJ you’ve probably noticed that your door switches are a little difficult to disconnect. I tried it, the passenger side seems possible, but the drives side is just plain old difficult to get to.
Thankfully, Chrysler considered this when they designed the door switches in your TJ. Behind your glove compartment, you’ll find your interior fuse block. If you pull out the glove box, you’ll find a diagram on the back of the box, fuse number 4 is listed as “Door switch defeat”. All you have to do is pull that fuse, and your problem is no more. Maybe that’s good for you, and honestly, i’ve done this myself with no complaints, but if you take your doors on and off frequently, this may be a pain. So I did a little digging. I found several references to a defeat switch. I found a write-up or two, and decided that this was a pretty easy mod, and why the heck not right?
I decied to put the switch in the glove compartment, so it was out of the way, and hidden from view.
I have a toggle switch, that measures 3/4″ OD, so I drilled a 3/4″ hole in the back of the glove box. Then I found that I needed just a tad more clearance, and used a rat tail file to fix that up.
I mounted my switch, and then started working on the electrical connections. There are two 5/16″ hex headed (or phillips screwdriver) screws at the top of the fuse block behind the glove box. Remove those, and then you should have a little play in the wires behind there. You should find, directly behind fuse number 4, several yellow wires, and one black wire. The black wire is ground, and the yellow wires go to the door switches. Put your switch inline with the ground wire.
I cut the wire, and spliced my switch in.
Then I put the box back in, and found that I didnt make the wires long enough, so I cut them, and extended them. Once I did so, i conencted the switch, and found out that I put the switch about 1/4″ too far to the left. It contacted the fuse block. I had to move things around a tad, and bend the terminals over. This wasnt a problem, just something I wish I had foreseen.
And thats it! Now if i open (or remove) a door, I can flick the switch off, and the dome light and key-in-ignition warning go off.