Random dome light sensor failure

[dlundblad]

I closed the rear hatch glass of my truck like normal and come to find out, the rear passenger and cargo dome lights remained on for about 9 hours. It drained the battery, but thankfully it couldn't have been at a more convenient time. After a jump and a 20 minute drive, it has been fine ever since.

I'm assuming the contacts wore out since it turns off when completely depressed. Thankfully the dome light has an off switch.. Just something else to watch out for as your vehicle ages I guess.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

 

[Dave9]

This is a reason I dislike the newer vehicle, timer based courtesy/etc light time out circuits. I want lights to go out immediately, so I see they are all out instead of having to wait around or assume they'll go out. Usually there is a setting to at least shorten if not disable that time out period but too often vehicles default to some period besides zero.

If you think it'll be a problem in the future, you might put in some much lower current LED bulbs so even if they stay on, they probably won't drain the battery from a period as short as overnight, but of course the ultimate solution is replace all trigger switches so you have an expectation it'll be much longer till it happens again if you even own the vehicle at that point.

 

[dlundblad]

I never thought about the LED light upgrade. I might have to look into that. Thanks.

 

[red7404]

you might check for bad grounds.

 

[Anon9283]

This recently happened to me on my 04 Grand Cherokee. The lift gate switches one or both went bad and the jeep thought the lift gate was open. Even though the lights weren't on overnight the body control module stayed active and drained the battery. I unplugged the switches and all was fixed. I don't plan on replacing them as I'm pretty sure I know whether it's open or not.
I did actually replace all my interior lights with LED but the problem was the module in my case.

 

[supton]

Heh, when I got my '99 Camry 3 years ago, it was a blast from the past, as the dome light was tied directly to the door switches. No time out, no fade out, just off and on. I've thought about adding fade out and auto off, but it's just been too easy to check the dome light and make sure it's off when I get out of the car.