Evening all,
I have a friend who owns a Peugeot 406 - nothing special - just a basic petrol model. (Not that well up on diesels). Anyway, he showed me a 'cool feature' today. When he pushed the remote button, the car unlocked and the lights came on - proper headlights and tailights that is. The car never did this before as a) I've seen it before and b) it's only a P reg 406. He reckons he did this himself but I have serious doubts.
Dad occasionally comes home in an E320 CDI which does this complete with fog lamps and folding mirrors, which, on a Merc looks pretty good but with a 406, I'm sceptical.
How difficult is this job? I can see benefits when it's very dark - not least in our driveway - and especially on a dark carpark. I suppose it's an offshoot of the interior lights illuminating when you push UNLOCK (which mine do anyway). I would never pay to have it done but it sounds like a good DIY project if it were that easy.
Cheers
** I would like to note - I am not a boy racer - I don't want blue neons, I don't want DJ Letsblowoureardrums playing through the stereo - I'm jsut curious.
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Adam
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If you're not bothered that it will do it in the day too.
Most interior lights have a permanent +ve feed and the other side of the bulb is grounded when they come on, but you would have to check, especially with a car these days where it probably goes through a body control module.
You need a bog standard 12v relay, and you wire the +ve signal side (low current) of it to the +ve of the interior light, the 0v -ve to the grounding wire of the interior light (the one that goes to earth when the lights come on)
and then the switching side (high current side) you wire across the headlight switch or whatever lights you want.
So when the interior light come on so do the lights.
Now this will be annoying, as just opening a door will make the lights come on,.
Does your friends do this?
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I would think that the same relay wired to the door lock switch would give the same result, but without operating the headlights whenever you open the door. Would the headlights stay on for as long as the door were unlocked?...no clue, maybe you could sort out some kind of timer thingy.
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Hi - thanks for your replies.
I only saw him do it when the car was in the drive so I don't know if the lights come on when the door opens.
I should say, I really truly am rubbish at this kind of thing but I originally thought of splicing into the interior light wiring but then realised the problem that Schnitzel mentioned; the lights would come on whenever a door was opened. Trancer's idea also holds weight as when you unlock the car, the interior lights come on for about 20 seconds - is this not a separate circuit than the door open relay?
Also, one other (probably completely unfeasable) idea occured to me - hooking it up to the parking light switch instead. That way, the lights would only come on when the igntion was off which is the idea situation.
In any event - it sounds complicated but I like tinkering around with stuff like that!
Many thanks
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Adam
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I'm sure it could be done with a little bit of wiring - as it is, the indicators come on for about 2 seconds when the doors are locked so most of the circuitry is already there I'm sure and I don't doubt it could be reconfigured if you wanted to.
(I remember a garage managing to wire up my mate's Escort's brakelights to the headlights so every time he braked to get through a tight gap it looked as though he was flashing the oncoming traffic to let them through...)
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