Rear Map/Dome Light Stuck ALWAYS ON!!
 

Hi i have a 2006 Acura RL. i have replaced the front dome lights, Trunk Lights and door puddle Lights with LEDS. ALL WENT PERFECT until..

I went to install the back 2 dome lights with leds and was struggling so the polarities were reversed but eventually i found the correct way. the lights were beautiful except they WILL NOT TURN OFF.

Things i have tried.

Resetting Car By Removing Battery

Replacing LED with Old Bulb...same problem.

removing fuses and checking.

tried all possible combinations of ON/DOOR/OFF

Opening Closing Door about 1 million Times

Bench Testing Circuit Board. couldn't find any obvious issues

Messing with all dimming knobs and buttons.

What can possibly be sending a constant Voltage AND overriding the ON/OFF Button??:whyme:

Please Help. I have no idea what else to try.

The MICU in the driver fuse box has control over the map lights as well. You might try doing an actual battery cable reset by removing the pos and neg from the battery and connecting together for 15 min and turn the key to the on position while they are touched.

Remove the other LED's that you swapped one by one until you find the one that is biased to provide the current to the rear lights that are always on. When you find the culprit then reverse it.

Do the original incandescents always stay on?

Do you even google bro?

This is common with a lot of cars that have computer controlled interior lights... different style/brand/types of LEDs have different amp draw and the computer may not even know they are on.

Saw that he mentioned the old bulbs act the same. Doesn't support an amp draw argument. Hard battery reset +1.

so for a hard battery reset or reset the ecu i just need to turn car to on position. disconnect the battery terminals and touch them together for 15 minutes?

not to go on a tangent, but read on another forum that touching the battery cables together does absolutely nothing.

Turn the key to on after u remove the cables from the battery and make sure to turn the key off before you hook them back up.

An elementary understanding of capacitors explains the theory behind the method. A capacitor charges when it has a voltage applied across its plates. In this case, one plate has 12V with respect to the other plate which is grounded (generally speaking). When you remove the cables from the battery, the capacitors will hold the cables at their charged voltage. Since capacitors are not perfect, there is some amount of parasitic resistance (coupled with other resistive paths to ground) that would allow them to discharge slowly on their own if you only disconnected the cables. Touching them together gives an almost zero resistance path for the charge to escape orders of magnitude faster. It is the fastest way to remove charge from as many components as possible. IOW, it does exactly what a completely dead battery sitting for ten days does only faster.

I understand capacitors and stored voltage. I went back and reread the other forum comment:
"disconnecting the battery and then "tying" the cable ends together removes any stored voltage in the various systems. It also erases any stored codes, presets and adaptations. It fixes, resets, or restores nothing."

I was just remembering the "nothing" comment.

It definitely resets and it definitely restores the zero voltage state. I can agree that it does not "fix" a broken electronic, but I disagree with the last statement.

I agree with you on the last statement

So, is the light still on?

the fire is still burning.

Have the same
problem but only one side of the rear LEDs stays on, what happened with the hard reset. Did it fix the issue?

Okay finally tried the hard reset. Held the negative and positive together for 15 minutes. And the problem is still here. I'm gonna buy a new unit and see if that works. $50 well see. Unless we have any other suggestions here.

Not sure if it is the same in the RL and/or if you have tried this, but do the lights in the back have their own on/off toggle? In other words, have you tried to turn the lights off by pushing the dome lens up? With that being said I know the master switch in the front of my TL will override this. Just a thought.

The RL has both the individual button and the master.

May be obvious, but just need OP to confirm he has tried simply turning off lights individually in the rear. :dunno:

Solution
 

OP did you ever figure out the solution?