Well, no.. That is what I did when removing pins 1 and 14 from connector C220a. There are no interior light relay in the normal sense, it's an integrated solid state switching circuit with a dimming feature internally in the instrument cluster. There are no standard relays inside the instrument cluster as that diagram seems to suggest. I'm guessing that the rudimentary drawing of an interior light relay is for simplicity as they did not want to include a schematic for the instrument clusters internal PCB....

 

Ugh, I hate design changes. Okay with the 2005 there is a battery saver relay (fuse 24, R304) built into the fuse panel that serves the purpose of turning power on and off to the interior lighting and puddle lamps.

 

Correct, but that battery saver relay only controls constant feed to the lamps for when you manually turn them on with the switch, it does not affect the auto on/off circuit or even the glove box light.

 

I do NOW!
(Thank You for your patience.)
I'm gonna back out of here and let you and alloro work this out.

 

Well, things are FINALLY making sense! (LEDs killing an instrument cluster does NOT make sense... )

After battling with this elusive rabbit hole for a week, I have now solved this issue. It became apparent a couple of days ago, when I came to start my trusty (well, maybe not so trusty the last week ) truck on wednesday morning, and it barely wanted to start again. I went to refuel, thinking it would charge on the way there, but after refueling it wouldn't start. Dead battery.. I bought a battery charger (finally got an excuse to buy one), and charged it for 7+ hours at home, at 6 A constant charge the whole time. That kind of gave it off, since it's supposed to go down as the battery charges. I unhooked it, let it sit for 15 minutes and measured 10.5 V, obviously a dead cell.

Replaced the battery yesterday, and today I redid the battery drain test to check if the failing battery was the culprit, as they often do make gremlins appear out of nowhere, and after sitting for about 45 minutes I had a current reading of 15-20 mA drain, jumping to 20 mA every time the anti theft light blinks, and it marks the end of a week of chasing non-existent gremlins..

At least, this shows that it's important not to jump to any conclusions, just because you replaced your interior bulbs to LEDs the night before, and the next morning the battery barely has enough cranking power to start the engine, and a subsequent battery drain test shows the interior light circuit draining power through the instrument cluster, does not necessarily mean there is anything wrong with it, even if it seems apparent that there are.. At this point, running on ebay and buying a new one would not have fixed the problem, it would be a waste of money.

Bottom line, diagnose it properly, in every way and once reaching a diagnose, test that diagnose to make sure it's correct, BEFORE ordering parts.. In my case, a dead battery almost made me buy a new instrument cluster... Gotta tell ya, the timing was friggin perfect for throwing me on a wild goose chase though! haha

 

Now you can enjoy your LED bulbs and I know it is safe to do. Win.

 

Plus I have a pristine and clean instrument cluster, there was some surface dust in there when I was digging around which I cleaned, and it now looks much more crisper and clear, so at least that came out of it...

 

In all fairness to yourself, anyone of us would've made the same assumption. Fortunately it happened to someone like you instead of someone that has little to no clue on how to trace the problem down.

 

Installed new LED bulbs now, and no issues with it what so ever. I went with a warm white type of LEDs as I didn't care much for the super white variety, didn't like the look of those.

I went with this for the cargo dome:

T10 / BA9S / Festoon 4W 200lm 24 x SMD 5050 LED Warm White Car Reading Light / Panel Light - (12V) - Free Shipping - DealExtreme

This for the 2nd row seats:

SENCART Festoon 39mm 5W 180LM 3500K 9 x 5054 SMD LED Warm White Light Reading Lamp (12~16V / 2 PCS) - Free Shipping - DealExtreme

And the front will receive a similar type as the cargo, but smaller size due to the bulbs facing upwards and not really well made for LED applications.

Puddle lights has the more standard white type of T10

Now, one thing that bothers me a little. Whenever the 3rd row seats are up, there's virtually no light in the cargo area as the seat backs are in the way of the light. 3rd row gets all the light. Am I the only one bothered by this? hehe.. I'm thinking of mounting extra light in the rear which won't be blocked by the seats.

 

Take Some pictures when you finished installing the leds. I want to do the same thing to my navi ☺

 

Being only 3500K do they give off enough light?

 

Color temp has nothing to do with luminescence. The cargo light is advertised to put out 200 lumens, which is more than enough. 3500K color temp is a more natural white which is much much more pleasant for the eyes, but they're whiter than the original incandescent bulbs. You can find bulbs with higher output in lumens, but the 200 lumens this one gives it's already way brighter than the stock OEM bulb. I think more would be too much.

You can see scales here: Color Temperature (Kelvin)

I didn't want to wait another month for the front map lights. I had a spare of the one I used for the cargo light, and I cut that in half and made two bulbs out of it, each with 2x6 LED's. This fit perfectly in the elongated map lights up front, so those are done.

It's raining and it's night at the moment, but I'll see if I can take some pictures tomorrow in daylight. Not sure if there's any point in taking picture of the light output as it's nearly impossible to accurately picture both light output and color temperature with a camera....

 

Here's a good picture illustrating the color temperature.

 

Well that will come as a big surprise to all of my electrician comrades as well as the architects and engineers I work with. Thanks for correcting an entire industry with your one post.

 

Well, if they believe color temperature = luminescence then they need to go back to school. Luminescence is the intensity of light, how much light is produced. This is often measured in lumen or lux. Color temperature is the color of the light that is produced. Low color temperature goes toward the red spectrum, high color temperature goes toward the blue spectrum.

In short: A bulb producing 1000 lumen at 3000K has a much brighter light, but warmer white than a bulb producing 100 lumen at 6000K, which will have a cool white appearance.