93 Cherokee randomly wont start

[wyattjo]

So starting last week my Cherokee wouldn't start... starter not even clicking or trying so I popped my Hood and just checked my battery connections etc and all seemed good I had power to everything just the started wouldn't do anything... I thought great I need a new starter so I closed the Hood and tried again and it fired right up like nothing so I figured maybe my starter solenoid was on it's way out or something... drove to sait parked for a day and came home no problem... but yesterday it did it again at random so I popped the Hood and tried cranking and it fired no problem so I thought maybe a wire was getting hit by my Hood or whatever so I looked around my engine and saw a white box up on the driver front fender that sat near the Hood I wiggled the connection and pushed the connections on tight and didn't have a problem again until this afternoon when it did the same thing over again... once again I popped the Hood wiggled those connections and it fired right up... so when I got home I re-did the connectors and cleaned the terminals and I've started it twice again without issue hopefully that solved it but does anyone know what the white box is? And what it does... when I disconnect the wires while running it starts dying so either way I think the new connections should help... here's a picture of it incase it helps identifying what it is...



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[morerpmfred]

That is the resistor (sp) for the coil. When turning over the coil gets full voltage so you get a stronger spark while starting. Once you turn the key in the ignition to the on position, power to the coil goes through the resistor then to the coil.


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[wyattjo]

Oh OK thanks I don't know why wiggling these wires causes it to start... it wont even crank or do anything until I wiggle them... time will tell if it's a permanent fix or if I just think I've found the problem... any ideas as to why its doing what it is?

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[tubby]

Fuel pump ballast resistor!

Jeep put them in to drop the voltage to the fuel pump so it  wouldn't be so noisy. I believe it was up till the 93 model year. The ceramic block craps the bed and a replacement is sorta necessary . You can just take the 2 ends and and cut the connections and splice them together . My XJ had this problem in a parking lot 3 years ago on my trip to Kelowna. Took me 5 minutes to jump and I've left it as is. No problems so far. Lots of XJ folk have done this and you can find a ton of threads online about this common problem. Google it and you'll find the exact same part as you have posted.

Good luck

[wyattjo]

Sweet if it happens again I'll probably do just that and see how it goes... at this point its working but I know what to do now... I'll just keep some stuff in the Jeep to do it...

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[cLAY]

Dodge used those on their ignition systems to kick the voltage down to the coil. On jeeps/amc they used it to reduce the voltage to the fuel pump and make it quiter due to customer  complaints of it being too noisy. As said you can just splice the wires together and it will be just fine.