Interior Lights Questions
 

Hello everyone. Hope you are all doing well. I have a Porsche 997.1 (2005) and I was installing some new LED lights to the interior. I have 2 questions.

1. When I was installing the glove compartment light I was trying to put on the metal housing AFTER I installed the light. There was a spark and now the LED light or the regular light does not work. Did I short it out by touching the metal to the selenoid? Do I need a new housing?

2. As I was trying to install one of the map lights in the dome, one of the lights AFTER I installed the LED light did not work. If I take the one from the passenger side which does work and put it in the driver side it doesn't work. But when I put the original light back in it does work. Any ideas?

Try flipping the light over. The ones I put in were directional. I got the same spark you did on one of the lights. Disconnecting the battery for a minute fixed it. I don't know why.

Correct. Led lights are all directional. If it does not work one way , flip it.

I did flip the light and even used the map light from the passenger side that was working and tried to put it in to the driver side and it didn't work even though it worked on the passenger side.

Test the light outside the car with a 12v battery. If it doesn't work connecting it one way, connect it the other. If if doesn't work either way, the light is cooked. If it works one way, but doesn't work in the car, disconnect the battery for a few minutes to reset the bulb control module - it went into protection mode when it sparked and cut power to that circuit.

Do I have to disconnect both positive and negative on the battery or just one? If just one, which one?

No, just one. Negative, but it doesn't really matter much. I too found out the hard way that it's best to install the metal shield before connecting the light to power.

Thank you. Will try that. Now I still have to figure out why the map light doesn't work. If I put the original bulb in it works. I've flipped the LED around and it still doesn't work. Maybe when I reset the battery it will work. Thanks for all of your feedback and once I fix it (hopefully) will let you guys know.

Always disconnect negative first. If your wrench touches the body there's no problem. If you contact the body from the positive post while the negative is still attached that's a problem.

Sometimes lights are bad out of the box. My kit came with a few spare bulbs. Don't forget the license plate!!!

Thank you for the heads up. I disconnected the battery and reconnected it and it still did not work. I think I shorted the little black capacitor so I just ordered a new housing as I tried different bulbs and none of them worked but the bulbs worked in other housings. I installed the footwell lights and made sure my wrench didn't touch the little black thing and they worked fine.

Now, my only problem is the driver side map light. Even when I switch the passenger side to the driver side it doesn't work even though it works on the passenger side and the original bulb works on the driver side. Sooooo ODD!