GenVibe - Community for Pontiac Vibe Enthusiasts

Ok this is an odd one but some of you may need this. My youngest killed her battery numerous times by leaving the dome light on, so I revised the dome light to use keyed power instead of constant power. That way when she takes out her keys and leaves the car the dome light goes off. No more dead battery.

On the plug the green wire with red bands is the positive power going to the dome light. You can separate it from the connector and dome light a bit, then de-pin it from the connector. I’m not going to cover the depinning here much, but be aware that this connector has a lock that needs to be pried up before you can de-pin the wire.







The red wire with silver bands is the keyed positive power. To keep this reversible I chose to simply insert the pin on green wire right under the red wire in the connector. Stuff it in there until it’s snug, then zip tie the green wire in along with the other wires in the cable bundle going to the plug. That way it can’t back out. Done!

Nice mod, and unfortunate that you had to do this for your daughter I wonder if new cars are smart enough to not have that problem

Was this in the 03 you did the engine rebuild on?

The pin lock on those connectors got me. My son's car was tagged in the back, didn't do much but the hatch couldn't be closed enough to turn off the door ajar light. still latched and sealed ok. I pulled a pin from a connector inside the hatch so it would never trigger the door ajar light, but it took me way too long to solve the pin release

I wonder if it would be worth it to just swap the green w/red with the red w/silver. That way the dome light would still be keyed power, but the sunroof controls would be available all the time. I guess it would only be useful if she was in the habit of getting out the car and then remembering to close the sunroof, saves having to key on to power it.

Again, nice tweak, and if it eliminates one reason she'll get stranded, then its great for your peace of mind

Thought all the Vibes had dome light supervision? My 2009 clearly does as I've "accidentally" left a dome light on and low & behold, after 30 or 45 minutes (not sure specifically) it automatically shuts off the dome light. The next time you start the car ALL returns to normal BUT you'll still have to physically turn off the overhead light switch or it will still stay on. At least it didn't kill my battery

tpollauf wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 5:56 pm Thought all the Vibes had dome light supervision?

That looks like the sunroof switch/map lamp assembly. Strange as it may be, while the dome lights would time out after a while, the map light didn't have those kind of smarts. It'll stay on until the battery is dead or the bulb burns out, whichever happens first.

ColonelPanic wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 1:01 pm

tpollauf wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 5:56 pm Thought all the Vibes had dome light supervision?

That looks like the sunroof switch/map lamp assembly. Strange as it may be, while the dome lights would time out after a while, the map light didn't have those kind of smarts. It'll stay on until the battery is dead or the bulb burns out, whichever happens first.

I just verified this last week, left the map light on in Silver for about 48 hours or so. Fortunately I had replaced the incandescent bulbs with LEDs a few years ago and didn't kill the battery. But yeah, the map lights stay on.