Help!!

[McVibe]

okay, so i got some interior LED's for my cars dome lights and map light and I install them and they work just fine, but when i come out to my car like 10min later, they don't work, radio doesn't work and my gauges don't show that the door is open. The lights are 12v 5w festoon style. Edit: So I looked in the fuse box in the engine compartment at the dome fuse and it was blown so I replaced it with the spare. What happened?

[joholste]

my best guess would be you over loaded the amperage on that fuse and blew it try to replace it with a stronger fuse

[joatmon]

I'm not familiar with the LEDs you used or how ou hooked them in, but maybe something shorted out when you shut the door. The dome fuse is what, 15Amp? so at 12V that's 180W, that would take a lot of 5W diodes.

[McVibe]

Yea, theres 6 LEDs in each dome light and 4 in the map lightShould I replace it with a higher amp spare fuse or use the spare 15? I was alos trying to angle the holder for the map light down a little b/c all the LEDs were facing forward and you couldn't see it clearly maybe thats what shorted it out

[joholste]

if you can i don't know if there is one but i would try to replace it with a 25 amp fuse. should be plenty, no worries later on

[joatmon]

I wouldn't bump the fuse up 40% and ignore it. if the LEDs were five watts each, and there were a total of twelve in the dome lights, then that 60 watts of LED power consumption would pull only 5 amps, the 15 amp fuse should have beeen able to handle that load fine, so I'd look for a different problem. I haven't characterized the vibe wiring, but I trust them to design the wiring harness so that a wire protected by a 15amp fuse should be able to carry 15 amps no problem. Can that same wire carry 25 amps no problem? I'd remember ragingfish's LED experiment and keep the fuse as rated.

[mikey00]

Listen to the man. Bumping up that fuse is asking for bigger problems.

[ColonelPanic]

Quote, originally posted by mikey00 »Listen to the man. Bumping up that fuse is asking for bigger problems.Absotively.Never, ever increase the size of the fuse in any circuit. The wiring in said circuit is designed for the rated amperage only - the wiring will not be heavy enough to handle the increased load. In a nutshell, if you replace a fuse with something bigger you are only making matters worse - it will take that much more current before the fuse blows, so if there is a problem with something on the circuit, the bigger fuse gives it that much more of an opportunity to do some damage. The wiring will get hot, which will lead to melting, catching something on fire, or possibly damaging something else on the same circuit. LED's have hardly any current draw compared to an incandescent bulb. Under normal circumstances, there is no possible way that the LED's would pull enough current that you would need to bump the fuse up. One of your LED's are probably defective - sounds like something is getting shorted to ground.I've had two drop-in incandescent replacement LED bulbs in mine, no problems at all. They're just the 4-LED not six, but two more LED's per bulb couldn't possibly be drawing that much more current.

[ragingfish]

Anybody who solves a blown fuse problem by just replacing it with a bigger fuse is an idiot. The wiring on each circuit is chosen to carry a certain amperage, which coincides with the fuse protecting it. Putting in a higher amperage fuse basically allows the wiring to burn up and melt, and the fuse will never blow to stop the short.Since I'm pretty sure no one on this board is a total idiot, I'm sure he has since located the short (what it sounds like) or whatever the problem is, and corrected it properly.

[McVibe]

Yes, in fact I have solved the problem and found out that when i fiddled with the map light, the piece of metal that was a ground touches the positive metal for the bulb and I'm pretty sure that would do it. And I just replaced the old 15 with the spare 15 and everything works fine.