Hi All,  This is my fist post to this forum.  I recently tried to replace my interior lights to LED.  I managed to successfully replace the lights in the centre of the ceiling and tested, which worked well.  I then tried to replace the light in the glove compartment, in getting the bulb out I managed to touch both poles with a screwdriver and the interior lights went off.  I first thought it was just the fuse, so I replaced fuse 23 which is for the interior lights, although no joy, the lights would not still switch on.  I then thought it was the LED bulbs (even though the centre lights had worked well previously).  Hence I changed all the bulbs back to the originals.  Unfortunately the interior lights still do not work.  I did get a multi-meter and test, there is no current.  Just to clarify this is manually switching the lights on or opening the glove compartment, which did turn on the lights before.  Please could you help if you have experienced something similar?   or suggest any other diagnostic tests to work out what could be wrong? 

Have you closed up the car, locked, unlocked and re-tried lights ?

 

Is the boot light working ?

If you shorted one of the lights then a fuse would definitely have blown, you just haven't found it yet, keep looking.

Thanks, I will go through all the other fuses today to see if it's one of the other ones.

What value in amps was the fuse you changed? Was it 7th from the right in the top row of smaller fuses?

5 hours ago, UrbanPanzer said:

Have you closed up the car, locked, unlocked and re-tried lights ?

 

Is the boot light working ?

Hi UrbanPanzer,  I did lock the car and check the boot, that light is not working either.  I will go through the other fuses today. 

9 minutes ago, Wino said:

What value in amps was the fuse you changed? Was it 7th from the right in the top row of smaller fuses?

The main fuse I had checked yesterday was number 23 as per the image below for the interior lights.  I checked a few of others (bottom row 1-8), and I switched the wind screen wiper one (15) with 23 and the windscreen wipers worked fine, so it was not the light switch fuse.  And yes, when I had removed it the wind screen wipers stopped, so it was the correct fuse as a test. I have not checked the rest of them , which I will do today and update, hopefully its one of these.  I was kicking myself for using a screw driver yesterday, the LED's did look good when it does work.  But now all of them don't work :(

Hmm, that's the one. 

I just realised, yesterday I was taking out all the fuses to test them.  Although I have a multi-meter, and can use the below to check the fuses without having to take all of them out.  So hopefully that should save some time.

 

 

 

Check that there is 12V on both sides of fuse 23, with it in place.

Hi all, Just wanted to say a big thank you for all your help and guidance with this.  It turned out to be a silly mistake on my part.   When checking all the fuses I noticed they were all working although one was not pushed in all the way, which must have been after I pulled them out to test them yesterday.  Lesson learnt, that has now resolved the issue the led lights work well as per the pic.  Anyone looking to update the internal lights, I noticed that you do not need the more expensive sets.  I had bought some (23 of them) on ebay similar to the below and they worked fine.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/23X-LED-Car-Interior-Reading-Light-Dome-Trunk-Map-License-Plate-Lamp-Bulb-White/184283920176?hash=item2ae82d7730:g:4UYAAOSwDCpetSGv

   

Just to say, I believe this is just for interior lights.  I had tried this for exterior lights (eg the reg plate) and that does so an error on the dash.  So do research carefully before buying any LEDs.  Replacing the interior with LED's will save the battery a bit as well.

Monitor your battery voltage for a while (e.g. once a week for a few weeks, looking for any downward trend)) to make sure you haven't just introduced extra parasitic current.  This seems to happen sometimes when people change incandescent bulbs to LEDs in interior lighting. For reasons I've not figured out, they sometimes seem to make some circuits not shut down correctly when the car is dormant.

Thanks Wino, good pointer.  I will monitor this over the next few weeks. 

You can print the above for MK2 and laminate one of them I corrected it to RHD, as the one inside is printed for LHD, you made same mistake as me only mine was the the one in boot and a trip to Halfords in the dark for replacement fuses....

15 minutes ago, Kobayashi said:

You can print the above for MK2 and laminate one of them I corrected it to RHD, as the one inside is printed for LHD, you made same mistake as me only mine was the the one in boot and a trip to Halfords in the dark for replacement fuses....

Fantastic idea, Thanks.  It is a bit of a fiddle trying to look this up on a mobile, this really helps.  I ordered some spare fuses as well to keep in the car, as you never know when you need them.