Hey guys,

I would like to install a simple LED inside of my car. I would like it to turn on when the dome light on the roof is on, so I'm guessing I need to somehow connect it to the wire that goes up to that light. My question is, how do I get to it without tearing off the ceeling material?

Also, I need to connect one end of the wires to the 'chassis ground'. Where is that?

Thanks for all your help!

 

to ground it all you have to do is bolt it down to some metal... namely the frame or something to that effect
an di dont know of any other ways for you to tap into that line w/o pulling the headliner off... well, unless you get a wiring diagram for the car and find out where it starts you can tap into it from there...

 

Ok, power goes to the dome lamp from the PDC with a pink wire. A yellow wire runs from the dome lamp to the instrument cluster. This wire controls the dome lamp. If you splice inline on this yellow wire it should work (no guarantees, this is what I figured from the diagrams, not from experience).

How To:

1) Disconnect the battery

2) Find the yellow wire running from the instument cluster to the dome lamp.

3) Cut the yellow wire, strip both ends.

4) Solder the positive pole on the LED to the side running to the dome. Solder the negative pole to the wire running to the instrument cluster. Extend the wires if needed to reach the proper placement.

5) Reconnect the battery.

6) Open the door to test.

I don't guarantee this will work. If it doesn't, reconnect the two ends of the yellow wire so your dome light will work again.

 

Ohhh, great. I will try that.

I also found this solution:
http://www.enthusiasts.com/howto/cabin-fl.mhtml

I'll try them tommorow and let you know if it works!

 

Oh okay. The relay mentioned in that solution is probably the relay that the wire I talked about comes from. It can be a little complicated to trace these things through the wiring diagrams, there's so much electrical and computer stuff in cars these days.

 

Ohh yeah. I lifted the top panel of the dash, just to see whats there and all I saw was cables taped together. Lots of them too. I was expeciting like 10 cables at most.

 

So, I was looking though the wires in my car and I found a yellow cable that might be what I'm looking for.

The cable that I found is going through the doorstep of the doors on the drivers side. Here is a pic:





Sorry if the pictures are not the best quality.

So, does it look about right?

 

I don't really know because the wiring diagrams don't specify where the wires run and the same colours will be used for many different things seeing as there's obviously only so many colour options.

 

Yeah, makes sense :-/

Last question: Is it possible for me to break something if I choose the wrong cable? anything beisde the LED, cause thats obviously easily replacable.

 

Having an LED inline shouldn't affect anything, as the power will either just flow regularly or not at all in the case that the LED is wired backwards (unless things are different since I last used LEDs 5 years ago, but then they had to be wired the right way to work). The LED will burn out if there is too much power in the line, but if you have one rated for 12v that should be no problem. Somebody else might know of something I don't, but I don't see any way that you could break anything.