so i bought some led strips to wire for my floor board. the way i wanted them wired was to have them turn on when i open the door and shut off when i close the door, just like the dome light does. after some trial and error i got the right fuse but it was in that pure moment of dumbassery that i realized they won't shut on and off with the dome light. they basically just stay on 24/7 now. i disconnected the ground so i don't drain my battery. can someone explain how i can wire these so they shut on and off with the dome light?

 

I presume you're using an add-a-circuit to accomplish this. If this is the case, then the wire you've tapped into is before the door switches, meaning power is constant regardless of the state of the doors.

Since I do not know the specific color of the 2008 year model, you need to remove your dome light and look at the colors of the wires. If you have more than one wire, use a test light or multimeter to figure out which wire does what. There should be two wires. One wire (usually light green with orange stripe) is on the battery saver relay, which shuts off after some time, usually 30 minutes or so. The other wire, usually black with light blue stripe, is controlled by the door switches.

Once you have it figured out which color corresponds to the actual dome light (controlled by the doors), find the same color wire under the dash or behind the radio. Once you have found it then you can wire your strips to this light.

 

When I did mine, I didn't want to splice in to wires in the dash and used a ring terminal on the positive screw off the dome light and ran a wire above the headliner down the A pillar and then out into the doors and under the dash. Never had a problem with them ever since the install, although I learned the hard way that the cheap strips don't last very long before they burn out

 

is there a way you can post pics for me? cause that sounds like what I'm trying to do

 

I no longer have the factory dome light, so being the most difficult part, I can't take pictures of it. One screw is ground, the other is hot. That's about all I can say as far as the wiring goes.

 

There ought not be a ground wire at the dome light, as it grounds to the cab itself. Granted, things have changed in later years, but I'm fairly sure they'd still have it grounded at the cab itself.

 

Went digging into my old photos.

This is the bolt layout of a ranger-compatible dome light which has map lights and a center dome light. Specifically this is a mustang dome set of guts, but the bolt pattern is the same for every dome which has the same features, like the bubble dome for example. If you're wondering, the extra lines and whatnot are for a schematic to power all three lights when the door opens while leaving the map lights switchable/independent. Ignore it if you wish. Not sure if this will help you or not.

1 - Constant Power
2 - Ground
3 - Door Circuit

 

wow ok that helps a lot. seems like the dome light is a little difficult to take on especially because when i was prying i heard a crack in the plastic.....but i found some videos so that should help

 

This is an older thread but wanted to ask.

On my keyless entry I have the option to hook up the dome light. I did not do this when I installed it but now want to enable the feature.

Picture below taken from instructions:

H1/3 BLACK/WHITE-1 Domelight Supervision Input
This wire determines what the output polarity of H1/4 will be. If the door pin circuit is negative, connect to chassis ground. If the door circuit is positive, connect to a fused 12V source.

H1/4 BLACK/WHITE Domelight Supervision Output
Connect this wire directly to the domelight circuit in the vehicle. The on-board relay will drive circuits up to 30 amperes. The polarity of this output is determined by the connection of the input wire H1/3 in the Relay Harness.


The problem that I don't understand is if I hook up the one wire to ground, does the other wire then go to the power wire of the dome light or does that go to the ground of the dome light? What is considered the dome light circuit of our trucks? What is the wire color?

Thanks much,
-Nigel

 

at the dome light, there are (supposed to be) two wires. One is light green / orange (LT/O) and the other is black / light blue (B/LB).

LT/O is the battery saver circuit. This wire connects to the map light provisions of the dome light, assuming it has them. This is the same wire that also leads to the glove box lamp and the mythical ashtray lamp (something I've only heard of and never seen) if yours was equipped. Technically this isn't the dome light circuit itself, but the dome light itself does connect to it.

The actual dome light circuit is B/LB. This is the wire that switches on and off with the doors.

From my understanding, the door switches themselves are switched grounds. The B/LB wire however is +12. The dome light relay's 86 and 85 pins are connected to the battery saver circuit and the door switch, opening/closing the relay as necessary.

It sounds to me that in the Ranger's setup, H1/3 needs to connect to ground, but that's just my interpretation.

It would be a good idea to connect H1/3 to ground with an aligator clip and then monitor H1/4 with a multimeter to ensure that it is outputting +12 when appropriate.

 

Wanted to update JUST in case anyone else looks and can't find anything.

What I ended up doing which was way easy and I should have done it sooner. The h3 wire from my Avital 2101 gets hooked up to a 12v constant source. In this case it was the aux plug behind the dash that I don't use. The H4 output wire from the avital gets hooked up to the dome light. Since the dome light trigger wire is blue/black and sends out 12v when the door is opened that's the wire I tapped into.

Everything works as it should. Way easier than trying to find the negative door trigger and or other wires from the back of the dash or door panel.

TLDR:

12v constant power to avital input wire. H3 > 12v constant
Dome light trigger wire=blue/black. Gets connected to avital output wire H4.

Thanks,
-Nigel