Help saving my Gen 2.5

[mon]

I have a 98 Gen 2.5 with the rear locker and I'm trying to save it from a litany of recent problems. 187k miles on it.

First, I had some issues with the connection to the battery, which kept making the whole vehicle have no power/unable to start up. I finally got the connection replaced, so that problem was fixed. However, after the last battery problem I've had the anti-lock light come on intermittently, as well as the center differential light blinking intermittently (when the transfer lever hasn't been touched). The car drove fine with these problems, so I assumed that it was a non-issue, and ignored it. I even did some off-roading while this was happening and it went into 4HL just fine, and performed well.

More recently, I was out of town for a month, and a rat chewed on a bunch of my cables, turning on the check engine light and costing me a lot of dough (combined with a hole in the radiator).

The anti-lock light and center differential light still come on occasionally, at seemingly random times. I decided to test going into 4HL on the pavement (silly idea, I know), and when I turned the wheel while driving I got a ton of resistance and the car didn't want to go forward very easily. I've gathered that this was probably binding of the differential, but I'm not sure if I did permanent damage to the Center Diff, because I managed to get it out of 4HL and into 2wd and now it drives just fine.

My question is: has anyone ever had a problem with the differential like this? Or does anyone know what might have happened/a good remedy?

Thanks for reading so much...

 

[RyanY]

IIRC there is a way to pull codes from the ABS computer - you'd have to do some research in the FSM to figure out how to access the diagnostic mode and get the ABS light to flash the code(s) for you.

It doesn't sound like there's any problem with the differential - it will bind up if driven on a hard surface with the center differential locked. The indicator light issues are usually due to a bad connection at one of the switches - there's a good diagnostic write-up on 4X4Wire that you can search for and follow to determine where your problem is.

 

[jeep-N-montero]

Here you go http://4wd.blogeasy.com/

 

[mon]

IIRC there is a way to pull codes from the ABS computer - you'd have to do some research in the FSM to figure out how to access the diagnostic mode and get the ABS light to flash the code(s) for you.

It doesn't sound like there's any problem with the differential - it will bind up if driven on a hard surface with the center differential locked. The indicator light issues are usually due to a bad connection at one of the switches - there's a good diagnostic write-up on 4X4Wire that you can search for and follow to determine where your problem is.

Thanks!

 

[mon]

Here you go http://4wd.blogeasy.com/

Thanks this is very helpful!