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Just noticed this on my car. You can see the dome lamps on but are very dim. It has led bulbs. Bulbs are from a forum vendor not that it should matter. Any one know what i can do . Dimmer switch is on the off position, and buttons are not in the on position on for the dome lamps. Thanks
You can see in the pic how dim the lamp is on. Car is locked ans key fob no where near
Just noticed this on my car. You can see the dome lamps on but are very dim. It has led bulbs. Bulbs are from a forum vendor not that it should matter. Any one know what i can do . Dimmer switch is on the off position, and buttons are not in the on position on for the dome lamps. Thanks
You can see in the pic how dim the lamp is on. Car is locked ans key fob no where near
Just noticed the same on mine with the LED upgrade. Read somewhere that its a normal occurance with the LED's. Had mine on for about 6 months and it hasn't caused any battery drain issues. I drive my car about once a week as its not my daily driver. No battery tender usually on it.....not concerned.
Having not reference my manual, I'm not sure if the map light buttons have to be pushed in or out for the light to come on. But as my car sits in the garage, those buttons are pushed in. In that position, they extinguish after a few seconds upon closing the door.
Check the dimmer control **** by you left knee, when in the car, if that is pressed the lights will stay on.
Not exactly. That button doesn't stay pressed in when you release it, so you should never see it pressed in if you're not holding it in.
What many forum members do, and don't realize it at the time, is to accidentally press and release that button with their knee while sitting, or with their hand while wiping the dash with something. That causes those map lights to stay on after the engine has been turned off.
If that's happening to you, just press and release it one time while the engine is running. You will not see an immediate effect. But after you turn off the engine, get out of the car, shut the door, and the doors lock if programmed to do so, those map lights will go out.
Reading your owner's manual a little more closely will tell you that's one of the purposes of that button to be there.
As far as I know, everyone with interior LEDs has this. Most just dont notice. Go look in the complete darkness, it's subtle. The reason is because there is a low voltage constantly present in the circuit. With standard bulbs you don't see it as they act like resistors (because they are resistors) and consume the low voltage without producing light. LEDs on the other hand will light with very little current. The solution is ignore it because it won't hurt anything. Or change one LED to a xenon incandescent, roughly the same color as white LEDs but high enough resistance to use up the low current present in the off state. Also, as stated earlier, it's not a problem, your battery won't drain any faster than normal.
LEDs are NOT incandescents! The factory incandescent lights are little wires that get so hot that they produce light. LEDs are semiconductors (Light Emitting Diodes) that produce light when electrons are pushed backward across an electrical barrier. They are kind of like a battery that when you try to overcharge it they release light instead of gas. The more voltage you put across an incandescent the more current flows through it. An LED has a fixed voltage barrier. Until you get up to that limit nothing happens. Once you reach that limit, theoretically an infinite amount of current would flow. With an incandescent the light output is a function of the voltage times the current adjusted by the operating temperature and the current is linear with voltage again with an adjustment for temperature. A LED has a light output that is related only to the current allowed to go through it since its voltage is almost constant (about 1.5 volts depending on color).
So, GM wants lights that can be dimmed. How do they do that? In the olden days they would put a variable resistor in series with the incandescent bulbs. The resistor would reduce the voltage at the bulb as the current increased. The split between resistor heat and bulb heat/light was reasonably linear as the resistor value increased. With the Corvette, however, they wanted to be able to dim the lights when you opened and closed the doors. Starting with the C4 they put in electronics that, instead of changing the resistance, changed the amount of time that voltage was applied. By applying A/C voltage (for the purist pulsed DC) to an incandescent bulb the heat/light it produced could be adjusted. With a 10% duty cycle (10% full power and 90% off) the light output would be much less than when the duty cycle was 90%.
Now we get to the C6. The C6 has the BCM computer controlling all the lights. The A/C is produced inside the BCM computer and sent to the filaments in the lights. Works well. But lots of people aren't satisfied and, being unaware there is any difference between LED semiconductors and little pieces of wire, they swap one for the other expecting the same result. That is where we start seeing unexpected results. The BCM computer generating the A/C does it with semiconductors ("transistors"). It applies about 5 volts when on and 0 when off. The circuit requires a small current to switch from the on to the off state. With an incandescent the duty cycle is so short the wire never has a chance to get even warm with the short pulse before the current is seen and the voltage turned off. But when a LED is substituted it lights up in microseconds as soon as it sees the 5 volt pulse start. That is when people start complaining that the LEDs are staying on.
Bottom line is that the LED and incandescent are each consuming a small amount of power when "off". The difference is the LED is producing visible light with that power while the incandescent is just producing heat because it never gets warm enough to produce light.
BTW, the switch on the dash has 4 positions - normal, push, left and right. All the contacts are momentary and just send a signal to the BCM computer little different than you pushing a key on your keyboard. It is the BCM computer that decides how to handle those contact closures and the BCM computer will always turn the lights off after a time delay even if you accidentally turn them on with your knee getting out of the car. The delay is 20 minutes after the door is closed or 30 minutes after they are turned on with the engine not running whichever comes first.
Yep...put LED interior bulbs in a few months back and saw a similar post to yours. Went intot he dark garage at night and sure enough they are dimly lit when in OFF position. Has not caused any battery issues. My car is a DD.
03-03-2015, 08:44 PM
Need help with dome lamps staying on
