Here's the convoluted story of me trying to add LED lights in my hatch and causing problems due to ignorance.


I bought two LED light strips. I wired them into my hatch light. They didn't come on when I opened the hatch and the other light did. They come on with a switch. No biggie to me. The problem is that I kept blowing a fuse that caused my dash lights and stereo to die.

I disconnected my factory overhead light in the hatch area and now the fuse never blows. Problem is the battery drains very quickly if hatch is left open. It drains even when I turn interior lights off and nothing is illuminated.

Any ideas what I did wrong?

 

No idea what you did wrong, lol. If it worked fine with no battery drain before you added the additional lights, start by removing them again. LED lights don't pull enough to drain a battery quickly, but a wiring error might. Put everything back and see if the problem goes away.

 

No Idea. The led lights are polarity sensitive, will not work backwards. Also a diode will not leak "backwards", but your strip just might if it has resistors to do some black magic I don't get.

I'd test the strip with a known pos and ground, then meter the dome circuit for a known positive energized by the switch. Like said, the led's won't use squat, and if you parallel them with the stock you should be fine.

Blowing the fuse might mean you let the dome positive touch ground.

OR! Could it be those get one positive feed, then come on if grounded by any door or hatch switch?

 

Thanks

 

When I wired these lights I was being distracted by my toddler daughter. When I took the assembly apart it looked like a drunken idiot had wired it. Took me about five minutes with a wiring diagram to have her up and running perfectly. Hatch open all night with no power drain and the LED strips now turn off automatically when the hatch closes!

Thanks!