Door switch wiring help!!

[94_240sx]

I thought it was going to be easy to figure out, but failed. Maybe biggie or hijacker can help me. What I'm trying to achive is... I want to hook up something to this door switch, so it'll turn on and off just like interior lights. It turns off if you close the door and turns on if you open the door. There are 3 wires as you can see in the pics. Black, red/white and blue/white. What should I do? Please help! Thanks!

[Eikon]

Black is ground obviously. One of the two sends a signal when open and the other sends a signal when closed.

Get a multimeter and check for voltage through the wires when the switch is depressed and then not depressed.

Then splice the wire that gives you current when the switch is not depressed.. meaning the door is open. I'm not an electrical expert, but you should probably stick a fuse in line between your splice and your new electrical component just to be safe.

[Hijacker]

The door switch is supposed to be a one wire ordeal. Only a power wire goes in, and then it grounds out on the mounting screw. I have no clue what the other wires do, if anything on the verts. If you use the switch on the passenger side, it'll be a standard door switch.

EDIT: Finally found out what the other two wires do in the fold out. They're tied to the Timing Control Unit. My guess is that it tells the TCU to flash the seatbelt light if the door is opened when the car is on as it completes a circuit coming from the TCU. The red/white is the standard dome light wire, the blue/white must be the signal from the TCU and the black is obviously ground.

[biggie]

^ Should be it.

Depending on the device could run it to the dome light wiring as well.

[94_240sx]

Thank you guys. I have a multi meter and test light, so I tried them all, but couldn't find. I think I've tried every possible combination. I'll try again tonight.

Depending on the device could run it to the dome light wiring as well.

Is it hard to get to dome light wiring? Where's the easy access?

[Hijacker]

All of the interior lights are chained together. You can use the kick panel lights if you feel like it.

The switch HAS to be screwed to the chassis to ground or else it doesn't complete the circuit. When I'm doing work that requires me to have the doors open for long periods and I don't feel like burning up the battery, I unscrew the switch a few turns.

Also, and this is my experience, when I try to manually ground the r/w wire to activate the circuit, I can never seem to get a strong enough ground to turn the lights on except past a very dim amount. I was checking which wires would be best to hook my keyless up to get dome light supervision, and I thought my lights had gone out because my test light was barely turning on when I grounded the r/w wire out at the passenger kick panel. My test light had an amazingly good ground, so my only guess is that without the switch doing the grounding, the system is bogged down from trying to run too many lights on a small ground via a test light or multimeter.

[94_240sx]

Nope! I tried everything, but it didn't work. I ended up using dome light wiring on passenger side kick panel and it worked just fine. Thanks for all your help.

[krash]

alright you got your answer, now spill it, What is this "device"?

[wmdavis007]

Are you wiring in a switch so you can turn on your interior lights with the doors closed? If so please let me know...it's the one thing I don't like about my vert...no interior lights without opening the door. I hate not being able to find stuff at night going down the road.

[DeXteR]

You do know that there are map lights in the rear view mirror, right?

[94_240sx]

You do know that there are map lights in the rear view mirror, right?

Yes, bottom of rear view mirror, but not all verts have this. Mine has it though.

wmdavis007,No, that's not it since I already have built in map lights in the rear view mirror. My interior is messy at the moment, but I'm almost there. I'll try to install everything back this weekend and post some pics sometime next week. You won't be disappointed.

[Hijacker]

You do know that there are map lights in the rear view mirror, right?

I had to order that mirror and wire it in myself. My car didn't even have the wiring for it. Way to go ASC!

[Eikon]

I don't have maplights in my mirror. I just use the moonlight to see what I need to see.

[biggie]

The dome light was pretty easy to get to, I pulled off one of the A pillars and then took off the strip that covered the dome light area.Some pics when I did the install:zerothread?id=221045

We still never figured out which models got the map lights either.

That was one of the first additions I had to do. When doing my audio stuff we accedientally blew the TCS and I had no dash lights on a 5+hr drive back home in the dark, had to use a flashlight occasionally to see how fast I was going (since my cruise hasn't ever worked).

[Hijacker]

I ran a power and ground down to a constant under the dash cluster for my map lights. It would have been easier if I had used the hot circuit off the interior lights circuit and just grounded the map lights to the top of the frame. Oh well, it's a good thing I like soldering.

I really want to find someone who can make a-pillar gauge pods that replace the whole a-pillar piece. That would be freaking fantastic and I wouldn't have this mismtached gauge pod staring me in the face. And I could hide the wires coming off of them easier.