I recently had to change out my water pump gasket because it was leaking. I got everything put back together and drove around for a few days with no issues at all. Long story short, on my drive home yesterday, I had a small hose come off the thermostat housing that I had forgotten to put the clamp back on. Antifreeze sprayed everywhere under the hood but more towards the passenger side until I was able to get pulled over and check stuff out. Managed to get the hose and clamp back on and used a jug of water I had in the back for the dogs to replenish the cooling system long enough to get me home (I was only a mile away). Got home with no more issues, unloaded stuff in the Jeep, and went inside for the evening planning on cleaning all the antifreeze spray off the next day. Noticed the reverse lights on later just before bed so went out to see what was going on. Got out there and the wipers were running continuously and the dash all lit up, and had a no bus warning on the dash. I looked around for any immediately obvious problems but didn't see any and was too tired to mess with anything else, so I just disconnected the negative battery terminal which stopped everything.


I've been searching around online all morning to try and figure out what the problem could be and where to start looking. Seems pretty obvious that coolant got on several electrical connections and shorted something out. The question is which do I start looking at. I'm going to start with pulling and checking all the fuses. It didn't seem like water got splashed in there, but the cover did have moisture in it which is probably from all the steam. There's another large wire bundle connection off to the right of the fuse box and battery that was pretty well drenched. I'm going to disconnect that, clean each side with some electrical cleaner, spray dry with air, then apply dielectric grease and reconnect. Once I've gone through those two things, I'll reconnect the battery and see what happens.


Is there anything else that anyone can think of that I should be checking on or doing prior to reconnecting the battery? I don't want to take the chance of shorting anything out or doing further damage. Hopefully this is just going to be an issue of connectors getting wet and a good cleaning and drying will fix it.


BTW, it's an 07 Wrangler that hasn't been modified.

 

As a follow up, I removed the battery and cleaned remaining antifreeze out from under it and all the areas around that and the fuse box. I took several connectors apart and cleaned them with electronic spray, dried, and reattached. Checked all the fuses and cleaned the connection points. Found 3 fuses that were blown. Hooked everything back up and as soon as I connected the second battery terminal, the wipers came back on dash cluster lit up like a xmas tree with the no bus message again. Radio would not come on and engine would not turn over or do anything. Tried to read codes by turning the key back and forth the required times but had no luck getting that to work.

After doing a bit more research, I found that the TIPM is located under the fuse box which is essentially allows everything to communicate from my basic understanding. There's been several instances where one module might go bad and it effects everything else. There's also many connections going into the TIPM that I was not able to access or see while doing the previous cleaning or checking for good, tight connections.

I'm going to pull the fuse box and TIPM out today, clean and check all connections, make sure everything is dry, and then hook it all back up and see if anything changes. Best I can tell from the limited info I've been able to find so far, the TIPM itself may have gotten damaged and I may have to get a new one or send mine out to get refurbished. With any luck, there will just be a loose or wet connection that will fix the issue though. If anyone has any other ideas as to what to check or a good place to send the TIPM to in order to get refurbished, I would appreciate it. Thanks.

 

I can't recommend a specific TIPM refurbisher, but there are a few out there. I'd just look at their records (BBB, forums, Google reviews, Yelp, etc.) and pick one you like.

Might I also recommend a healthy dose of dielectric grease in each of your connectors after you clean them out. It won't help with connectivity, but it will help prevent water intrusion.

Good luck!

 

So I went out to do everything I had said previously. As I was turning the TIPM over and around trying to get all the connections loose, I noticed there was fluid coming out of it so antifreeze definitely got inside the component and did it's damage. I was able to get all the connectors off fairly easily except one along the bottom middle. Eventually I got it to come out after fighting with it for a bit and damaging the connector itself. As you can see in the photo, part of the board and connector had melted together and 2 pins ended up coming out of the board still connected to the connector. Needless to say, I'm gonna have to get another TIPM and connector and that is most likely going to solve the issue. I will say, one of the connectors that came out was attached to one of the fuses that were blown and I believe it was for the fuel pump. The connector on the top side where the fuse goes into was also slightly melted around one of the pins as well. There's also a pin from another connector that was loose and wiggling around even though the connector came off cleanly and easily.

AZJeeper, I will definitley be adding some dielectric to all the connections when I go to put it back together. There are a bunch of holes along the bottom of the TIPM case probably for ventilation. In this case with steam and hot antifreeze being sprayed nearly directly at the box, that's most likely how a lot of the moisture ended up getting in the unit to begin with. I'll update again after I get a new TIPM installed to verify that was the issue.