A cheap mod that's actually functional as well as visually appealing.

 

gagman66, did you find that your map lights tend to remain on while driving at night with a very faint glow. When I upgraded my car to LED interior lights, this is what my car did. I believe it has to do with how the car senses when to turn on the map lights. In my car, you simply tap the map light and it turns on. This can be done by simply keeping a very low current/voltage signal to the light and then monitoring the current. As you touch the light, there would be a slight change in the current (from it passing through your body to the body of the car) and then that would trigger the computer to turn on the light. Because LEDs are so efficient, they can use this very low current to make a small amount of light. People have actually commented on the lights being on dim like that and like it. I found it annoying initially as I would always see 2 lights on in the rear view mirror. But, I am getting used to it.

 

Yes! I attributed this to buying cheap eBay LED Bulbs. So, better, higher watt bulbs won't resolve this?

 

Did you change the front driver and passenger foot well lights to LEDs? I tried but they wouldn't work or stay working. Like I said these are cheap eBay bulbs, so will try again with higher quality ones.

 

gagman66, I bought my LEDs off of e-bay and have had no issue with my lights other than what I found was none of my interior lights were coming on. But, with a little bit of research, I found out that I had disabled the interior lights (touch and hold the center light fixture for 5 seconds). After resetting this, all the lights worked just fine.

Something you may want to try is flipping the LED bulb 180 degrees so the terminals get reversed. It is possible that the LED bulbs got installed backwards which will cause the LEDs not to light.

 

While attempting to upgrade the trunk bulb to LED, the light stopped working altogether. I checked the original bulb with a multimeter and it checked good.


Question: which location and fuse controls the trunk/boot light?

 

gagman66, did you flip the LED bulb over to try it the other way? The LED bulbs are polarity sensitive and need to be inserted a certain way. As I stated in your other post, I have looked at the drawings and they don't seem to show a fuse for the bulb in question.

 

Can someone please check the voltage from the trunk/boot light? I get 1.28V, the bulb is good according to multimeter?


Any suggestions?

 

Hi,

Checking the schematic the trunk lamp is an output from the central junction box without a final fuse. That means it will be controlled by components on the PCB itself which suggests there is probably a mosfet with current sensing involved. It may be that it requires a certain resistance for the circuit to supply the full voltage, and the sensing is holding the circuit low assuming the bulb has blown. They use a similar technique to detect blown headlamp bulbs (and LEDs).

I have been out to test this on my car and it does appear to behave in the same way. With the bulb present and on there is 12.8V across the bulb. With the bulb removed there is 1.33V between the terminals. When the bulb is then replaced the lamp will not come on until the car is reset (either wait 20 minutes with the doors all locked, or start the engine, stop it then lock and unlock the car). Once reset the bulb is them illuminated again.

It may be that your LED replacement is fine, but the car needs to reset first as it believes the bulb has blown so does not try to illuminate it again that 'session'. Can you try it and see if that helps?

Regards,
Dave