Interesting electrical discovery...

[mikeyk101]

So in the past when doing some electrical work on vehicles, there was a need for the dome lights to be off so that electricity wasn't flowing through some circuits. Older vehicles usually had a push switch that when door is closed, turned that circuit off. It was easy to either hold it in or sometimes just pop switch out and disconnect it. 

 

I had taken note some time ago that these Silverados no longer have those kind of switches and that when door is opened, there seemed to be more circuits that were active. I was stumped on how I could disable the dome lights and other circuits tied into an open door. I finally learned that instead of a switch, these now used the door latch to control these functions. Hopefully I'm not the only genius that just found out about this. It turns out that the latch inside door can be pushed in all the way (2 clicks) and shortly after the dome lights are off and dash is off too. I verified this while drivers door was still open by turning ignition key and it didn't show any open doors. 

 

The big reason I wanted to figure this out was because one of the main fuse boxes is mounted on left side of dash but cannot be reached when driver's door is closed. Older fuse boxes used to be under dash and even with the door closed could still be reached although would require some advanced acrobatic skills and special contortionist techniques to get to. I had wanted to find a circuit that supplied constant 12v power even with door closed. I can now accomplish this easily. I know that I still need to be aware of retained power which can still keep circuits energized after vehicle shut off but IIRC, when driver's door gets opened after ignition turned off, that cuts RAP??? 

 

I just have to remember to pop latch back out before trying to close the drivers door or I will have a problem. 

[Wyatt1963]

cool beans!

I will give it a try.