modification to stop rear map lights from draining battery
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Driver School Candidate
Joined: Mar 2020
Posts: 3
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From: CA
modification to stop rear map lights from draining battery
I recently DIY fixed the one big flaw in our 2010 RX 450h, the fact that the rear seat map lights will kill the battery.
Once our oldest turned about six and a half, our kids frequently turn on those rear seat map lights. For some unknown reason, they are on always-on power, and kill the battery. This happened to us at least 7 times, and rendered the car "unreliable" in the eyes of my wife. She wanted me to trade it in, but it's such a great car, that has worked so well.
Instead, I decided to try a modification. The rear-dome light is already on switched power. How hard could it be to wire the map-lights to the same switched power as the dome lights? Not that hard it turns out. And now the rear map lights will automatically go off when I turn off the car!
Howto: rewire RX450h rear map lights to be on switched power.
At the same time, I replaced all the interior lighting (except the map lights) with LEDs, which reduces the power consumption of all the other lighting enough I shouldn't blow any fuses by putting the rear map lights on the same circuit (not sure if one would or not).
I hope this is helpful for someone else. I took some video I plan to eventually stitch together demonstrating the removal and fix.
Once our oldest turned about six and a half, our kids frequently turn on those rear seat map lights. For some unknown reason, they are on always-on power, and kill the battery. This happened to us at least 7 times, and rendered the car "unreliable" in the eyes of my wife. She wanted me to trade it in, but it's such a great car, that has worked so well.
Instead, I decided to try a modification. The rear-dome light is already on switched power. How hard could it be to wire the map-lights to the same switched power as the dome lights? Not that hard it turns out. And now the rear map lights will automatically go off when I turn off the car!
Howto: rewire RX450h rear map lights to be on switched power.
At the same time, I replaced all the interior lighting (except the map lights) with LEDs, which reduces the power consumption of all the other lighting enough I shouldn't blow any fuses by putting the rear map lights on the same circuit (not sure if one would or not).
I hope this is helpful for someone else. I took some video I plan to eventually stitch together demonstrating the removal and fix.
Thread Starter
Driver School Candidate
Joined: Mar 2020
Posts: 3
Likes: 0
From: CA
Pulling the maplight bulbs is an option, though they cant be accessed.from the clear cover, one has to pull the entire assembly to get to them.
They are sone kind of funky custom bulb assembly.
They are sone kind of funky custom bulb assembly.
Pole Position
Joined: Dec 2012
Posts: 2,128
Likes: 947
From: Toronto, ON
After changing all interior lights to LEDs, I've come out in the morning to discover the one of them was left on a couple of times now, but no problem. I once left my mobile phone at work in an area I was using the flashlight feature. The phone only had about 60% charge. Next morning I went to retrieve it 15 hours later. I discovered the flashlight was still on and the charge was down to 3%. LEDs are very efficient, a 12V auto battery could probably run an LED light for a week or more.
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Jun 5, 2020 11:42 PM