Gauge Lighting Part Duex!
Thread Starter
Drifting
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 1,969
Likes: 8
From: NJ
Gauge Lighting Part Duex!
Ok, I want to share my experience to help further the cause. Please take my comments with a grain of salt as they contradict many of the comments made recently on this subject. I'm passing on my experience with my car in hopes of helping someone later, or developing a deeper conversation on the subject.
It seems, as Ed from Pipedreams alluded to, that the car's interior lighting is on a bizarre circuit. Its not hot and ground like old school cars. It seems its connected to a microprocessor or something which is way too complicated for me to get into. I'll save that explanation for somebody smart.
If you tap into a wire the system sees an unexpected draw and it goes completely nuts. At least on my car. Lights flash horns, windows, all sorts of bizarre crap culminating with losing VATS and not having the FOBs work anymore. Which is a simple fix to relink VATS but oh by the way the car must be in the "run" position which is tough to accomplish with no working FOB. I had to disconnect the battery several times, make sacrifices to the General, hop on one foot and swear a lot to get a FOB to link long enough to re-flash the car.
I did actually tap the "gray" wire on the hazard switch also. It worked for exactly 3 tries then the above fiasco started again.
So, I am going to wire the lights to a keyed source and use a switch if I want to turn them off. I will also hop on one foot, pray, vow to never drive a Honda and whatever else it takes for this to work without causing wierd things to happen inside the car. I hope to god I didn't fry the PCM but it seems thing are working now. I think.
One other note, using the base (reference) wire, or ground in the light circuit doesn't work with electrical gauges because its nto a ground. The electrical gauges need a true ground to work. There lights are controlled by a single wire and use the ground the gauge runs off of.
Like I said, believe me or not, take this with a grain of salt, these are my ACTUAL experiences on my 2005. I'm not sure how many of you tried this, but there are a whole lot of good ideas that did not work for me. Hope this helps.
It seems, as Ed from Pipedreams alluded to, that the car's interior lighting is on a bizarre circuit. Its not hot and ground like old school cars. It seems its connected to a microprocessor or something which is way too complicated for me to get into. I'll save that explanation for somebody smart.
If you tap into a wire the system sees an unexpected draw and it goes completely nuts. At least on my car. Lights flash horns, windows, all sorts of bizarre crap culminating with losing VATS and not having the FOBs work anymore. Which is a simple fix to relink VATS but oh by the way the car must be in the "run" position which is tough to accomplish with no working FOB. I had to disconnect the battery several times, make sacrifices to the General, hop on one foot and swear a lot to get a FOB to link long enough to re-flash the car.
I did actually tap the "gray" wire on the hazard switch also. It worked for exactly 3 tries then the above fiasco started again.
So, I am going to wire the lights to a keyed source and use a switch if I want to turn them off. I will also hop on one foot, pray, vow to never drive a Honda and whatever else it takes for this to work without causing wierd things to happen inside the car. I hope to god I didn't fry the PCM but it seems thing are working now. I think.
One other note, using the base (reference) wire, or ground in the light circuit doesn't work with electrical gauges because its nto a ground. The electrical gauges need a true ground to work. There lights are controlled by a single wire and use the ground the gauge runs off of.
Like I said, believe me or not, take this with a grain of salt, these are my ACTUAL experiences on my 2005. I'm not sure how many of you tried this, but there are a whole lot of good ideas that did not work for me. Hope this helps.
