Door Courtesy Lights

Electronic systems, stereo and Holden iQ, wiring, it all goes here....
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smwalker
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Door Courtesy Lights

Post by smwalker »

Was having a discussion with Bill tonight On email and wanted to post some info that I plan to expand on in the future. This is concerning adding door courtesy lights or Puddle Lamps to our door panels. Bill has a set of AU panels with them installed but I found there is a spot on our PPV panels that has an indentation for them just have to do some careful cutting:

One last--I've got a set of Holden Statesman door panels which have a small lamp at the bottom to illuminate ground when a door is open, but there's no harness included, and PPV will have nothing in the doors to supply power for this. Could you research and figure out how it could be done?

Please send a pic of the lamp in the door panel, I am in the middle of doing this mod with aftermarket lights so I would like to see how close I got!  Was not even aware the AU cars got them.  I saw the cut out for them in our caprice panels so I came up with my own solution.

So to get power into the doors for these I believe there is 2 ways, well maybe even more but here is what I came up with.

The proper way.  On he BCM there is a connection called "puddle Lamps"  I am not sure if that is for the lamps on the underside of the mirrors of the ones at the bottom of the door panels.  The difference between these comes down to as you approach the car and unlock your vehicle you would want the mirror lights to come on but you would not really care if the door panel ones came on since the door is shut anyway.  I figure the door latch provides them the ground to light them when the door is open but not sure how they get their power, maybe they share the puddle lamps voltage with the mirror, maybe it is a second source of voltage from the courtesy lamps circuits.  Just not sure could not find a diagram for this option since it did not come with the PPV.
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What goes along with this proper solution of course would be that the BCM may need to get programmed to activate the puddle light circuit (if it can be done at all, have not checked with Chris White on that)

PPV limitation on this is that the door harness plug on front doors only has 2 spots available to add new circuits.  Ground all time and Ground when door open is already in there if you need to tap into them.  Just have to get a positive 12 volts in there for the lights.  We have a few circuits to choose from for that.

My way.  Not wanting to deal with the BCM I opted to get 12 volts from the courtesy light circuit that is positive when you press the unlock button on your remote and fades out when you start the car, but will energize again if you open the door or press the dome light button.  In our cars this is the "Blue Wire" courtesy lamp circuit.  The other courtesy lamp circuit is the "orange wire" and it is positive 12 volts all the time but turns off after 20 minutes of car inactivity.  To make things confusing there is another 12 volt courtesy lamp circuit that never shuts off and it also uses the orange wires.  I believe the Lighted sun-visors use these which is stupid but I digress.

So I sent the blue wire into the doors for 12 volt positive and I used the Brown wire with white stripe coming from the door latch assembly to provide ground to the door lights when the door was open.  THis way when the door is closed and you turn your dome light on the doors wont light up, although it's not that bad if that did happen, provide a little but of light at the side of the seats in case you dropped something.  In that case you would just use the all the time ground in the door to provide a ground to the door lights.  One little flaw I found with this set up:  The drivers door ground when open is a separate signal from all the other doors that all share a ground (for the RAP feature I suppose).  So if you open any other door besides the drivers door all the other door courtesy lights light up even if the other doors are shut.  I am sure there is a way to defeat it with some diodes but not a big enough of a deal to worry about.

Grabbing the blue wire circuit proved to be a challenge.  The only place that circuit runs on our stripped down PPV is up to the headliner to our dome light assembly.  It comes out of the BCM but Not much room to work down there.  I tapped into it where it runs up the A pillar and sent it down into the top of the dash to make it's way around to the doors (and also added courtesey lights to my kick panels)

I plan to write up a post with terminal part numbers and such, but it is so complicated I think a video might be an easier undertaking.


Here is some pics of one of them mounted and the hole needed to be cut. Yiy can see the outline that is already in our door panels.

Image Image

Lamp assembly info the same as in this thread: Adding Glove Compartment Courtesy Lights
Last edited by smwalker on Sat Nov 19, 2016 12:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Steve Walker
Azusa, CA
'11 PPV 9C3 Huron White
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Re: Door Courtesy Lights

Post by Navy Lifer »

I'll get some pictures soon.
smwalker
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Re: Door Courtesy Lights

Post by smwalker »

Here is the first step, getting a source for 12 volt power. Like I said before the only existing wire that gives 12 volts when pressing the unlock button on your remote is the blue and white wire in the headliner harness. That is behind the A pillar on the left side. I used this wire for a couple reasons. 1. I plan to get the mirrors with the puddle lamps so this wire will power them when you press the unlock button on the remote. So since I was already sending this wire into the front doors for that I though I would piggy back on it for the lower door puddle lamps as well. Like I mention before we only got room for two wires to get sent in to the drivers door using the factory plug. I was using the second cavity for LED lighting project so I only had one wire for the door puddle lamps.

So we got that unused orange wire in the headliner harness (turns out that wire is for the spotlight, being a 9C3 I never had a spotlight installed so it was unused. Yours might be connected , in use or cut off) that had a one contact Delphi 150 series connector on the end of it. I cut off the connector with about 4 inches of wire and spliced that into the blue with white stripe wire. Doing a connector there gives you a disconnect point if you ever need to take out the headliner you can disconnect it from the new blue wire I added that goes down the dash to the front door.

Image

End Result:
Image

Then of course tape that to the main harness to keep it from flopping around.
Steve Walker
Azusa, CA
'11 PPV 9C3 Huron White
smwalker
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Re: Door Courtesy Lights

Post by smwalker »

THIS INFORMATION IS FOR 11-13 Cars ONLY
14+ are different see below for that info.

Getting into the doors you can either just run a wire alongside the existing factory harness or you can use some terminals in the factory connector to get supply voltage in there. Like I said there are only two spots on the drivers door we have open and they are different sizes. In the rear doors think there is about 4 spots open and they are all the same size.

So the front doors both look similar to this:
Image

With I think spots 8 and 16 open. As you can see they are different sizes.

So the small spots like 16, these are terminals that are similar to the ones in your up fitter harness under the dash:
Yazaki Male 090 Series 7114-4021
Yazaki Female 090 Series 7116-4021

The larger terminal for spot 8 witch I only suggest you use if you for some reason want to send 2 circuits inside the door as the terminals are hard to find.
Yazaki Male 4.8 (187) series 7114-4032
Yazaki Female 4.8 (187) series 7116-4032

For the rear doors you would use the same terminals you used for spot 16 above. Will need 1 male and one female for each door.

Then inside the door I suggest you use some kind of connector that will be up high on the door with a bit of slack in the wire so when taking off the door panel you can disconnect the lights in one easy step. I used a 2 cavity (one for power one for ground) Delphi 150 series connector is it is what is commonly used throughout the car.

12047662 Delphi 2 position black connector - 150 series female
12047664 Delphi Secondary Terminal Lock Female
12047767 Delphi Terminal Female 150 Series

12047663 Delphi 2 Position Black COnnector - 150 series Male
12047665 Delphi SEcondary Terminal Lock Male
12047581 Delphi Terminal MALE 150 series


For the connectors a the lamp they are just common push on spade connectors. IF you want to go with a factory TE/AMP push on connector the part numbers are:
7-180984-5 - Housing
180464-2 - terminals

Although I have no idea how the wire gets crimped in on these style of side terminals. So that's on you!

Wiring routing. Once I got my wires in the door I followed the harness up to the mirror wiring and had it break off the harness right before it got to the mirror plug. Then I did my 2 cavity connector and sent the wires down the door panel to the lamp a the bottom. This makes things easier to disconnect when taking off the door panel if you can work at the top of the door as opposed to the bottom.

Any questions please ask, sure I forgot something.
Last edited by smwalker on Mon Jul 09, 2018 9:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Steve Walker
Azusa, CA
'11 PPV 9C3 Huron White
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Re: Door Courtesy Lights

Post by No Moa »

Great info thank you!
2014 Caprice PPV silver
2017 Ram 3500
2002 CETA trans am
1996 Impala ss (soon to be t56)
1995 9c1
1977 Trans am SE 4spd.
1978 trans am 400 4 spd.
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