Lights tied into door entry??

[MrTyke]

Hello all. This is a wonderful forum. I'm a three-month old owner of a base model 2005. I'm interested in putting some LED lights in the foot area of the front driver/passenger area that is controlled by the door entry (opening a door) and by the interior lighting switch on the left front panel. Is it possible? Which wires do I use...tap from?Thanks in advance Tyke

[mcgusto82]

behind the light dimmer control. there is a red/white wire. this is the negative trigger for the driver's door. our cars are negative trigger. so connect your power to the battery, and ground there. just so you know, once the door is open the lights will come on, once you close the door. the lights will go off.

[joatmon]

behind the light dimmer control, there is also a red/black wire, this is the negative trigger for the dome lights, so if you use the red/black wire as the ground for your LEDs, the LEDS will come on whenever the dome lights come on, door open or dimmer set to "ON" and will not come on when the door is opened if the dimmer switch is set to "OFF"

[MrTyke]

My thanks to mcgusto82 and joatmon for your insight. I plan to do the job this weekend. Tyke

[mcgusto82]

i'm no expert, i just play one on TV. one time i stayed at a days inn. it was great. - loli try to help as much as i can.

[joatmon]

Quote, originally posted by mcgusto82 »i'm no expert, i just play one on TV. one time i stayed at a days inn. it was great. - loli try to help as much as i can.you rock If I was going to do it, I am not sure if I would want it to be when the doors were open or when the dome lights were on. Would be pretty cool to have the dome light control set to off and still have the LEDs come on when the doors were opened. Or to be able to turn them on while driving around independent of the dome lights and the door.THat's my problem. I keep making things overly complicated, and want the most flexibility, and then I never decide and implement.

[ColonelPanic]

Very cool guys. I've been wanting to do something along the lines of this myself. This is a cool idea. I hate not having any lighting down there that is switched with the doors, this car is the first I've had without any. I've ripped out the LED's under there (yet again) to upgrade (or downgrade, not sure which way) to version 10.0 or something for my under-dash LED's. Now that it looks like it can easily be done thanks to your help, this will now be implemented along with the conventional switched LED setup for whatever else I will be doing. Now, to make sure I didn't get something backwards like I always do, it's the red wire with white stripe, no? I think I may have saw a white wire with red stripe on the dimmer control when I looked earlier tonight. Just wanted to check.

[MrTyke]

First off....THANK YOU!I finally found the thirty minutes needed to get the job done. ...and now it's done. The lights are installed and properly connected. I chose to use the red/black wire on the dimmer control. I wanted ANY door to cause the lights to illuminate. Just as you indicated, the red/black worked. As for power, I used another posting-of-old. I took another thirty minutes and installed an auxillary power source in the center console. THEN, I made it constant-hot. That way, I had power even when the car ignition was off. I tapped off that constant-hot source and ran a line to the LED lights instead of dangling a line from the battery. In my excitement in getting the time to do the job, I neglected to take time to photograph my progress. But anyway, there are a lot of folks that have already done that deed. I am VERY PLEASED with the results. GENVIBE has made the Pontiac VIBE a better vehicle to own!Lastly.... Thank you.Tyke

[ToolGuy]

I was thinking of doing the same thing! Now I can! Great post BTW!!!! I have always had vehicles with lamps on the floor! I have even tried to wire the single map lamp to come on with the others but that resulted in the map light when turned on, turning on all the lamps! I also bought a smaller socket to add in the map lamp assembly and wire it to the others but there was no room for 2 sockets/bulbs.

[djb383]

How do you get to the backside of the dimmer control - from under and behind the dash (pita) or will it pop out from the front of the dash?????? Thanks.

[joatmon]

Quote, originally posted by djb383 »How do you get to the backside of the dimmer control - from under and behind the dash (pita) or will it pop out from the front of the dash?????? Thanks.I stick a finger in the vent and yank it straight out. the whole bezel with the vent and the dimmer/mirror controls pulls out. (I do that sometimes while driving to relieve the monotony.)

[mcgusto82]

Quote, originally posted by joatmon »I stick a finger in the vent and yank it straight out. the whole bezel with the vent and the dimmer/mirror controls pulls out. (I do that sometimes while driving to relieve the monotony.)lolbecarefull. i've notice the more i pop a panel open, they more it begins to rattle.also, all of the negative triggers are tided togetther. there's contunuity between them all.

[MrTyke]

I chose to use a plastic scraper that I had used to patch my drywall. I pryed outward from the bottom. The first time I pulled that vent out, I took quite a bit of care because I didn't know how much I could pull at it. Turns out that there's about three inches of give in the wire from the bottom dimmer/mirror connectors. ...and that's MORE than enough play. Nothing is attached to the top ...except for the grips that attach the molding to the dash.Doing this job was much easier than anticipated. Total cost was just under $29. Twenty of it was in the cost of the lights. Oh...and one hour of MY time...priceless.

[binary]

Post photos! It's so dang cold out now - I barely check the tire pressure much less think about ripping my dash apart for the upteenth time to add some coool lights. Make a Cheesehead happy and show us your skills!

Attached files

[MrTyke]

Posting the pics...I'll get there. Similar to you, the cold has restricted my outside exposure. ...and the holidays makes for long days. If pictures makes this posting more worth-while to you, then I'll push the photos as soon as I can. As mentioned in previous post, I followed illustrations from others...particularly with the wiring.Tyke