Interior Lights Went Out

[AlabamaDan]

So my interior lights stopped working - both map lights, the dome light and the cargo light.  Interestingly the garage door opener stopped too.  You may recall that I replaced one the map lights with a cheap eBay led bulb.  It worked fine.  Thursday I tried to replace the dome light with another led bulb.  I couldn't get it to work and now nothing works.  I'm assuming I blew a fuse somewhere.  Any idea which one it is?

[onespiritbrain]

Strange that it blew a fuse since the LEDs should be drawing less current. Maybe one of them shorted.. I’d take them all out before replacing the fuse.

If one did short then you might be able to see the trace damage on the pcb.


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[AlabamaDan]

I tossed the cheapo led bulbs and replaced the OEM bulbs, but it still doesn't work.  What's pcb?

[onespiritbrain]

It’s the circuit board the LEDs are mounted on. You can probably see discolored areas on it If they shorted out.

Have you checked for a blown fuse?


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[Slartibartfast]

Given the size of the fuse on that circuit, I'd be surprised if a shorted LED bulb had time to discolor before the fuse blew. I think the fuse for the dome light is "room lamp" on the WD21, not sure about the R50. The rest of your bulbs were probably fine; if a bulb's shorted, it's probably the last one you installed, or else the bulb is fine and something else shorted it out during installation--a ring, maybe a heat sink on the back of the bulb? Again I'm not sure about the R50 but my WD21's dome light has some exposed connections inside that wouldn't be hard to short out.

 

Find/replace the blown fuse, then test the last bulb you put in.

[AlabamaDan]

I was able to find the fuse and replace it. Problem solved. Now I think I want to share away from all these eBay LED I purchased. I’m nervous.


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[RainGoat]

Unfortunately that was my experience. After significant problems with my Mom’s JGC, I pulled them from all 4 cars. Diode Dynamics, DDM Tuning, JDM AStar, iJDM Toy have all worked well for me over several years use now. Sylvannia & Phillips are of course good & XtremeLEDs has a good rep too.

[Slartibartfast]

I'd just go through each of them and test them, either with a meter or with a power supply, and see if any of them are in fact defective. If you find a bad one, pitch it (or take a closer look and see if you can find solder globbed over two pins or something). Then reinstall the lights one at a time and see how it goes.

[AlabamaDan]

I'm working on replacing my interior bulbs

 

 

[AlabamaDan]

Interesting... I received my high quality led bulbs today from Amazon today.  Interestingly I installed the bulbs in the same order as my Chinese eBay bulbs.  Map lights first work fine.  The the dome light and poof nothing worked.  The fuse blew again.  I replaced the dome light with the OEM bulb then the fuse and everything works again.  What gives?

[onespiritbrain]

Try putting the oem bulbs in, put another fuse in, and flip the dome switch. See if the same thing happens. I’m thinking it’s a short in the switch somehow.

 

Edit: wow I suck, somehow I missed the part where you did exactly what I just said haha

 

Something must be shorting to ground in that dome fixture. Take a closeup look in there with the LED bulb in. Do the same with the maps, maybe it’s happening in there..

 

I had to bend the contacts a bit in my fixtures; maps were very loose and were blinking and the dome was too tight. The rear dome was okay. However I don’t know that poor contact would blow a fuse on a 12VDC circuit. I guess it could.

 

Note: the blinking map lights was already an issue with the oem bulbs

[RainGoat]

I was often using a small screwdriver to pop the lenses on vehicles & then I would just go ahead & use that screwdriver to pop out the bulb. More than once I accidentally shorted it & blew a fuse because my approach was lazy & not well thought out-you’ll note I said more than once-some people have trouble learning from their mistakes. I expect somehow you shorted it. The other problem I encountered was cheap build quality but you said that you’ve already moved beyond that.

 

 

[AlabamaDan]

Could installing the dome light backwards cause a short and blow the fuse?


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[onespiritbrain]

Unless I got lucky twice in a row then no. However most of the time when there’s a 50/50 chance, I make the wrong choice. Maybe that’s balancing out with a double correct choice.

Depending on how many fuses you have, it might be worth a try.


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[Slartibartfast]

LEDs are diodes. No current should flow if they're backwards, unless there's some kind of driver circuitry or something in yours that's unhappy with reverse polarity for some reason (and that seems like a really dumb thing to build into a bulb that can be hooked up backwards). Again, I'd test the one you're putting in the dome light to see if it's shorted out internally, or look for any way it could be touching things it shouldn't during installation.
 

I built a bench power supply a while back from a computer power supply from an old PC tower. Pretty easy to do and you can find instructions online. It does 3.3v, 5v, and 12v, and it's got a built-in breaker to shut itself off if it's shorted out or overloaded. It's really helpful for this kind of stuff.

[RainGoat]

I built a bench power supply a while back from a computer power supply from an old PC tower. Pretty easy to do and you can find instructions online. It does 3.3v, 5v, and 12v, and it's got a built-in breaker to shut itself off if it's shorted out or overloaded. It's really helpful for this kind of stuff.

NICE!