Electrical Question/Thin Lite

[mattmosman]

Hoping to get some help from you electrical gurus.

I removed the rear thin lite on the interior penthose roof. What I was left with was these two wires (see attached pic).

- I assume one is the hot wire and the other is neutral?
- Any spefications on the light I will replace it with or will any old light work?
- An unrelated question....the front thin lite is not working. I can't recall if this has always been the case or it stopped working when I removed the rear one. Would removing the rear light affect the function of the front?
- Would the removal of the rear thin lite in any way drain the battery or affect it's ability to charge?

Thanks in advance for the advice/help

[JWA]

Originally Posted by mattmosman

Hoping to get some help from you electrical gurus.

I removed the rear thin lite on the interior penthose roof. What I was left with was these two wires (see attached pic).

- I assume one is the hot wire and the other is neutral?
- Any spefications on the light I will replace it with or will any old light work?
- An unrelated question....the front thin lite is not working. I can't recall if this has always been the case or it stopped working when I removed the rear one. Would removing the rear light affect the function of the front?
- Would the removal of the rear thin lite in any way drain the battery or affect it's ability to charge?

Thanks in advance for the advice/help

I've been using Thin-Lite fixtures since the early 90's---they've come a long long way.

Using a test light or DMM check for which wire has full time power or is powered up when a switch is actuated.

Drop the non-working fixture and check for power there too--tough knowing if the two are tied together where removing one breaks a circuit. Did your vehicle come with any sort of schematic(s)?

If the removed fixture's wires are properly capped off or otherwise protected from contacting a metal surface and creating a short circuit them being gone shouldn't affect anything.

HTH

[mattmosman]

Thank you for the insight. Vehicle did not come with any schematics unfortunately. Do you see any issues replacing the removed thin lite with just a regular light?

[Scalf77]

So if by regular light you mean 12 volt incandescent bulb light. Generally people have a harder problem going from incandescent to LED because the polarity on the LED is important.

I suspect that you blew the fuse for the ceiling lights, which is why the front light does not work anymore. All you would have needed is for those two wires to touch each other.

The fuse is generally under the cover of penthouse top , front left corner.

A couple of rough schematics from a 2004 and 2008 SMB manual.

-greg

[mattmosman]

The blown fuse was the culprit. That thing was a bear to get at but once replaced the front light worked and the rear has power going to it now. Thanks all for the help.