Date:         Fri, 17 May 1996 21:33:26 -0600
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Dieter Dworkin Muller <dworkin@village.org>
Subject:      interior lighting, or leaving the key on


1966 Microbus, camper interior from a company in Texas.

I just spent a little while replacing the passenger/load area light
with the backlight from a laptop computer ($12, pulls about one watt,
and about as bright as the two ten watt bulbs that were in there [yes,
I know they're supposed to be five watt bulbs]).  Now that I've got a
decent light level that won't melt its housing, the wiring is really
starting to bug me.

To whit, the lights are controlled by three switches in series.
Working from back to front, we have the switch on the light fixture
itself.  Second comes the switch on the left side of the steering
column mount.  Finally, we have the ignition switch.  This means that
to have light while camping, I have to have the ignition on.  As you
may imagine, this means there's a bit of contortion required to turn
everything off (either leaning over the back of the driver seat, or
getting out and going around to turn off the key).  If I've just spent
a while reading so as to relax enough to get to sleep, turning off the
lights pretty much negates the benefits of the relaxation time.

The questions:

- Will leaving the ignition on, with the engine off, run the battery
  down in less than a week?  My belief is the answer is yes, because
  of power going through the probably-closed points, not to mention
  the alternator/generator warning light.

- Is there any good reason for the interior lights to be controlled by
  the ignition switch?  The only one I could think of is that it makes
  it harder to leave the light on when parking the vehicle and leaving
  it unattended.  I'm willing to deal with the potential dead battery
  that would result from doing this.

- Where's a good place to take power off of that bypasses the ignition
  switch, given the existing wiring?  I'd rather not have to do major
  surgery to achieve this, if possible.

Thanks much!

	Dworkin