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I replaced the bulbs in the interior dome lights in my jeep with LED's. In front, there are two lights - driver and passenger. In back, there is one. The old lights were too dim, the new LED's are great - much brighter.

They are supposed to turn on when you open the door and you can also push on the light itself to turn it on / off.

With LED's though, when the lights are supposed to be off they are on, but dim. Its not enough to see in daylight, but just enough to be a little distracting at night. (Basically, if the key is in the ignition, the LED's are always on dimly).

I assume this means that there is always some voltage running thru these even when supposedly off. Why wouldn't they switch off completely? Nothing seems to stop working when any of the bulbs are completely removed.

How can I fix this - so they switch off completely, and without reducing the brightness when turned on?

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    on the liberty the body control module grounds the circuit to turn on the lights. the power side is always hot. I'd make sure that the ground side wire is really off with all the doors closed and switches off. I'm not sure how much sense this makes but you could disconnect the plug and jump power to positive side of the led to see if the bulb lights up. this might tell you if there's a short to ground on the housing...
    – Ben
    May 28, 2016 at 11:54
  • Thanks - that does make sense. I'll test for that when I get a chance.
    – joeking
    May 31, 2016 at 17:23
  • Did you get it fixed?
    – dlu
    Jul 26, 2016 at 20:32
  • I've not had a chance to work on it - the Jeep is off at college with my son :-)
    – joeking
    Jul 26, 2016 at 21:18
  • Long overdue update...I tried experimenting with a few things like adding a resistor. The resistor got rid of the glow, but it also dimmed the led when it should have been fully bright. Basically, I don't have good enough test gear to know for sure what was happening. Just a multimeter. My guess though is that the light controller was using PWM to control brightness. A friend suggested that the continuous low power causing the glow is done intentionally to keep the incandescent bulbs a bit warm for either better dimming control or quicker response.
    – joeking
    Jan 20, 2019 at 17:38

2 Answers 2

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Some cars have timers that keep the lights on for so many seconds after you close the door, this is done with an electronic timer and the timer may not be compatible with led's, leaking voltage.

Only solution is to locate the timer and wiring diagram for it and bypass the timer, this would require some skill.

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  • Pretty sure that's not it. Would happen with regular bulbs as well. On some cars when incandescent bulbs are replaced with LEDs they maintain a faint glow even when off, as there is a tiny current (probably microamps) passing the lights for some reason. On incandescent lights this isn't nearly enough to heat up the filament, but the diodes need very little current to start glowing. Had this on my car as well, never solved it.
    – I have no idea what I'm doing
    May 30, 2016 at 11:53
  • Hmm...The jeep does have a timer - so the interior lights stay on for a bit after you shut the doors. However, once the time expires the LEDs turn off completely. It's only when the key is in the ignition that they continuously glow. So I think it must be something controlled more directly by the ignition switch.
    – joeking
    May 31, 2016 at 17:29
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You need to add a 1000 OEM resistor to each bulb From what I read the LEDs don’t take much wattage to run so they stay on really dim I I bought a packet of the resistors and I’m going to switch them out I tried it with out and they stay on real dim so this is supposed to fix the problem

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