Hello everyone , Im a new member Ive had my 01 cherokee for a while, it was my father's now its mine. its hitting the 210k miles and still stands strong kinda. the thing is that I had noticed like a month or two ago that my rear wiper rocker switch light stopped working, but the switch still functioned as intended. as yesterday night I turned my lights w/cluster lights, as a normal night and then out of the blue the cluster lights, radiolights basically all of them interior stopped working, came home and noticed a fuse bown, changed it to a new one and it worked perfectly the whole day until night came again and same old story, cluster lights stopped working but this time a burning smell appeared along with some smoke, this time i tried to activate the rear wiper switch but it was stucked. I applied some force and it moved activating the rear wiper, the smoke came near that are above the rocker switchs below AC unit controlls.... I also noticed that if I had the cluster lights off with the dimmer switch for some reason the smoke stopped...
im planning on during the day test it turning on the lights and looking for were does the smoke is directly commin from, any help is good help.

 

You have a short somewhere, hence the smoke. Burning is usually insulation, but plastic can do the same. I would not drive it until you know exactly what is going on and take care of it. Pull the bezel off and take a look as planned. Look for any exposed or burnt wiring, and check the connectors and the switch itself for anything suspect.

Disconnect the battery first.

Here is a diagram of the rear wiper circuit (from Cherokeetalk) if you need it. Haynes shows the same diagram for 97 and up.

 

Hi and thank you for replying and the diagram, it was quite useful, ended up testing and looking for what was burning, I replaced the 20 fuse on the hood, and noticed that it was all my rear wiper switch fault, apparently when the little light bulb went out somehow the wires or filament meltdown creating a short, inside the switch. ill post some pictures later of the switch and how it all melted. once the switch was removed from the circuit all worked perfectly.

 

after struggling and prying for a while I finally got the switch out, it would have been easier to just leave it there just unplugged since now I know that the whole problem was caused by a blown light inside of it. it turned out as I had mentioned before, the light's filament didnt burn but welded itself together creating a short inside the switch. the first symptoms where, when driving with lights on during the night with my cluster illuminate as most of us, the light inside the rear wiper switch worked from time to time sometimes requiring a few taps for it to light up, it never stopped working until the plastic pieces inside melted locking the switch in the off position. then the rear defrost switch stopped lighting, for a while I thought that the light just blew like the rear wiper switch. it continued to work since I removed the melted switch my xj voltage while running is hitting the 14 when in movement, the whole jeep lights are way brighter than they used to. I have ordered a new switch hopefully it arrives during the next week, meanwhile, I have installed a normal switch that you can get basically at any auto parts store or radio shack. I kept the outside of the original switch attached in its place and arranged the new switch inside the housing, it is activated like the last one, looks the same but it doesnt lights up since this one doesnt have any leds....
I did saved the little blue plastic cover that came with the oem bulb, as suggested by other post in the forum, and I will do a full DIY led conversion with resistors. if you guys want to see a post showing how to wire cheap 3v leds to a 12v system let me know and I will post it ASAP.