schwinn

Just did this mod today. Sooo much nicer to have light when you open the doors. One thing to note, not sure if it was mentioned before, but by tapping the brown wire on the dome light the dome light switch does not affect the maplight mod. In other words, flipping the domelight switch to off doesn't disable the maplights from turning on with the door opening... not a problem, as I leave my dome light on the "door" setting all the time... In any case, great mod and instructions!

Black LGT with rear fin spotted on School st in Manchester, MA, right near exit 15 off router 128... yesterday (4/8/06) around noonish. I was in my wife's Mazda Tribute in front of you, unfortunately...

... or acetaminophen "Tylenol"? ... or ibuprofen "Advil" The list goes on, of course... Anyway, as to what Claw said - I agree. My wife has an Ipod as well, and we use Winamp with the MLIpod plugin... no issues at all, and about as much functionality as the iTunes software. Incidentally, I read an article about battery life online a while ago - did you know that iPod (and other players) can get about 10% improved battery life by using non-DRMed MP3 files? Makes sense, since there is less work to de-DRM them when playing... all the more reason to switch to MP3 instead of the AAC/WMA formats.

If you have the factory sub, it probably has a suitable signal to work with... just need a DVM to find it, I would imagine. Even if you don't have the factory sub, I imagine there's a rear-connecting jack on the stereo for it, so, again, it should be easy enough to find.

Just a suggestion Jazzy - maybe to move the "development" item posts to a different thread? So that people don't have to search through this whole thread to help out?

Questions for you, jazzy... and a little thinking aloud... In each track change, you list two sequences... what is their relationship? In other words, as I understand it, you were looking at the digital signal on the line... so is there a pause after the first sequence series, and then an output of the second is some sort of an ack response? Beyond that, are there any other signals in the line? What I am thinking is that there is one chip that is generating the command sequence, and it repeats it until it receives an ack-response (maybe on the same lines? Maybe on another pin?) And then, assuming the latter of each series is an ack-response, it's some sort of response with some "processing" on it. On this same line of thought, have you monitored the other lines during track changes, to see if they are transitioning at all? Might help in identifying the other lines, as it seems unlikely to see so many different "constant" voltages of varying levels... Similarly, did you check continuity to ground on the supposed ground lines? Maybe they are logic-lows? With regard to your digital sequences: Are there pauses with each hyphenated segment? Any other such clues to the data stream may help make some more sense of it? Still, it doesn't make sense why a track-up would generate a different signal for odd-to-even track changes vs even-to-odd transitions...

You sure your lights are on all the way (two clicks on the stalk in my 06 LGT)? I pulled the plug (as many others have) and simply don't have DRLs... Did you pull the right plug? Did you knock something else loose?

Well, the issue with blue is that the eyes behave weirdly with it. Blue can be very annoying sometimes (look at blue LEDs) and can also increase the perception of haziness. Yellow (incandescent) lights are generally better accepted, but they "look old" which is why they make the blue-tinted bulbs these days, to help reduce the yellow-ness of the bulb and make it "look" whiter. Ideally, pure white would be best, of course, or something slightly less blue (which ends up being yellowish, as you have deduced). HIDs are just as you described - high intensity. When focused and directed properly, they work great (projector style). However, when people pop HID lights into an incandescent reflector assembly, they simply piss off the rest of the drivers since they are not properly directed... You are also correct, "looking white" doesn't mean brighter, though many people will buy the marketing. As a side note, in some countries they will put a blue-dye in their "bleach" to make white clothes look whiter. Again, it's not really whiter or cleaner than regular soap (since there is no bleach in there at all) but it fools the public well enough, and it's cheaper to make than bleach...

Just FYI - dielectric grease is NOT electrically conductive. You don't want to put this between your electrical contacts, as it will reduce conductivity to the plug. Dielectric grease is intended to keep the wire-boot from melting/sticking to the spark plug ceramic. In addition, it's high electrical resistance is intended to keep the plug from tracking along the outside of the plug, and to help provide a "weather seal" for the conductor inside, to help keep it from corroding or getting wet/moist (a good boot will do this anyway, but in that case, you use the grease to help slide the boot on more easily.)

I have Silverstars on my previous vehicle. It's a little brighter for sure, and certainly whiter. They have been fine for 2 years now, fwiw. Incidentally, just to point out a little silliness that I see on the roads. Often I see people with blue-tinted lights. The Silverstars are more white, and slightly blueish, but not like the "blue" lights I see so often. For those that don't know, blue is one of the harder colors for our eyes to see - that's why you have heard of those Blueblocker sunglasses. So, going "blue" isn't the answer - it simply adds haziness to your vision, and doesn't accomplish much else. Yellow lights probably are better than blue, with white being the best, of course. Ok, I'm off my soapbox now.

Just did this on a 2006 - simple and easy, due to the pics. Thanks for the writeup! Incidentally, your picture doesn't really show the box clearly, so I was a bit confused at first as I was expecting a connector midway on a harness. After closer inspection, I noticed the connector is right on the DRL box, and that's where you unplug it from. Nothing major, just didn't "see" that in the pic...