I bought an inexpensive 10" Flip-down DVD player for my xB to put in place of the dome light.

It's working well in except for one thing, the light doesn't come on when the door is open. I can switch them on with the switch but it's not activating when I open the door.

Initially I had trouble figuring out which of the 3 lines was ground, 12v and door because the door had gone to 0v after 20 minutes because of the Scion's safety feature. (That and they are all white with a red stripe...) But I'm pretty sure I measured 12v on the middle wire after locking, unlocking and opening the door. And installed the players' door switch to that one.

But nothing triggers the dome lights.

So I pulled the DVD player down and I can't seem to get 12v on the door (middle wire) line any more. I cut my bullet connector and I'm testing bare wire so it's not the connector. I even used a pin sleeve I made for my meter lead to push under the wire sheath further up and I'm not getting anything.

I checked ALL the fuses.

So can anyone tell me if the middle wire should be going to 12v with the door open? Did I just see what I wanted to see while testing?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

-Jeff In Madison

 

Definitely try the other wire. Also, with your DMM, test each lead from the car seperately with a solid ground. When I installed my puddle lights, I noticed that the positive isn't the wire that fades in and out. It's the ground. So the ground wire will actually have power, but when the lights dim out, it will go back to negative.
As I recall, the positive is constant and the negative is the one that has the dimming.

Good luck.