Can anyone in readerland explain why Olds felt the need to isolate the dome lamps from the courtesy lamps in the console? The dome lamp is powered by the orange wire (as is the console) and grounded thru the white wire on the door jamb switch (and the headlight switch). The console is grounded at the door jamb switch on a white/black tracer. The key warning buzzer is grounded on a black wire.

My question: why separate the lamps? The only idea I have is maybe Olds thought turning the headlight **** and having all the lights come on might be blinding? I have a new modernization idea for my car, and trying to understand Olds engineers thinking before I get too deep in this project. Thanks.

 

Console lighting and courtesy lights are optional equipment on some vehicles. If you get a console, you get an extra harness to light up your life.

 

I know that, my question is why the console option would use a different wire to trigger the lights. The regular dome light is triggered by a white wire, the lights in the console are triggered by a white/black wire. What was the reasoning for not triggering all the lamps with the solid wire?

 

I too am baffled by engineer's logic.

 

Well, I’m sure many of you in readerland have no doubt been following my winter dashboard refurbish with great interest. For the rest of you who have a life, I have the dash out of my car to find/fix a squeak, and to repaint the dash. I also decided to remove and repair/rewire lots of old wiring. Things like the old progressive nitrous controller wiring, 2step, etc. that’s no longer needed with the EFI. Years ago, I built a new wiring harness using a fuse box from a mid 80s chevy truck.


I’ll now get to my point. I’m adding a RAP (Retained Accessory Power) module from a mid 90s Camaro/Firebird. It’s a very easy swap, but it requires a ground trigger to shut off the radio when you open a door. Instead of messing with isolation diodes to prevent courtesy lamp power from back feeding into the RAP module, I thought about putting all the courtesy lamps on the solid white wire trigger, and using the white/black wire as the open door input. Knowing how the corporate been counters think, Olds wouldn’t have messed with adding a special 3 pin door jamb switch, and the extra wire unless it was needed.


I plan on doing a write up on the RAP module install when it’s all sorted out. As of now it works on a bench test.