Three problems related to seat broken have been reported for the 1996 Jeep Cherokee. The most recently reported issues are listed below.
1. Electrical short under left side dash, main wire bundle going to fuse box rubbed against bolt and wore through wire causing a short. 2. Neutral safety switch gone bad. 3. Driver's side seat rail broke somewhere and seat rocks around. 4. Rear leaf springs have a negative arch in them causing rear to sag and wheels to rub with minimum weight in vehicle. Dt.
The front left corner of the drivers seat has broken loose from the adjustment slide. This causes the seat to tilt back when accelerating. The metal is torn from around the bolt. The bolt is still intact. The upper left door hinge is also coming loose from the body. The weld that secures the hinge to the body is failing. I contacted the local dealer (not the one who I bought the car from) and the service manager told me that he had not seen these problems before. Since it is out of warranty he suggested I take it to a body shop. The fellow at the body shop informed me he has seen quite a few door hinge failures. He even had a Cherokee in the shop with the same problem. He also said the seat failure is not uncommon. I feel these are safety issues and the manufacturer should at least reimburse part of the cost of repair, if not fix it at no charge. The seat in particular is dangerous because if the other side breaks, I'll be laying down trying to drive!.
The driver's seat cushion frame broke at the welds. This caused the front mount of the cushion frame to fracture. There was no way of knowing the welds had fractured until the lower mount finnally gave out. I was lucky that this happened when I just got into the Jeep. If I had been driving down the freeway, and the seat broke, I would have lost control. I went the my local Jeep dealership, showed them the broken seat. There was nothing they could, but were willing to order the part. Of which there were only three available in the nation. I tried to locate the part used on the national web of salvage yards. On every Jeep of this year at the salvage yard, the front driver's seat was already missing. I believe this is a safety issue and should be looked into. I still have the broken seat cushion frame for further analysis. I just wonder how many accidents this problem has caused, and were blamed onto something or someone else? thank you for reading and considering this note.