motorob

Many many thanks! Back when I had trip insurance I wasn't worried so much about vacation, but without it these kind of pics are a lot of help in deciding where to go and how to get there.

Sorry to be so long getting back to you guys. I did indeed fry my BCM (Body Control Module), master control for lots of the car's functions. Without warranty, this would have been an expensive repair ($600+) I pulled all of my stuff off, wnet to dealer and plead ingnorance. "My dome light won't go off and I don't know why." BE CAREFUL how you hook this mod up, the original instructions are great, don't go getting too creative with them. I suspect that if enough of us screw this up, Subaru will start to instruct dealers to be on the lookout for this failure and deny warranty coverage for the repair.

I didn't think about maybe melting the dome light switch, I'll try bypassing it with a jumper or something and see if that's the problem. I kinda doubt it, it turns off and on, it's just that the "door" position is the same as "on" now. mcsquish - You're not a smarta$$, I'm a dumba$$.. I checked the doors etc about 1000 times. I tried to do this whole job so that it was as reversible as possible, switched wires in maplight terminal instead of cutting, and mounted wires on the ends of the bulbs instead of soldering. Actually, I did something kind of cool there that I was going to tell everyone about, but I've kind of lost my enthusiasm for it now that I screwed the whole thing up. Instead of twisting the part of the wire that goes on the end of the bulb in a loop I mounted a small ring terminal there, it gets sandwiched between the end of the bulb and the light terminal. That's actually the root of my problem, that works so well that I was able to put the terminal and bulb in place from the "front" side of the maplight assy. I was not really paying attention to which side of the bulb I put the terminal on at that point (excited about gettting the job done) and put them on the wrong side. I then got in the back seat, put the dome light terminal in place and stared stupidly at the maplights for 5-10 seconds while I tried to figure why they weren't lighting up (while the auto-dimmer happily melted, I now suspect..) At the dome light, I put a terminal between the bulb and "door" terminal (middle blade off switch) so that the maplights would turn off with the dome light switch. I then went and rechecked everything and figured my problem. It's too bad, my installation is really clean, the way I did it is essentially plug-and-play other than switching the maplight power and ground. You could make up the harness I have and sell them that way (hint hint to some enterprising soul... another hint, if someone does this, be sure to put a strong disclaimer in the box for the moron who connects it backwards and fries his dimmer...) On the plus side, as I said, everything was easily removed and there's no trace of it now. I'll probably just go the dealer and let warranty clean up after me. Too bad my brain's out of warranty! Thanks for your help, and I'll let you know how it turn out.

As others have stated, this is a great idea and anwer to an annoyingly dark forward cabin. I have performed the mod as stated here, switching the wires in the terminal and attching the wires at the bulbs (without soldering). After putting everything in place, my lights will not turn off AT ALL with the dome switch in the "door" position. I have now pulled everything off, essentially putting the car back to stock (other than the maplights' wire terminals still being switched) and my dome light still will not turn off. It will turn off with the switch in the "off" position, but when switched to "door" they stay on. Anyone have any input or help? I wonder if I could have fried the control module for the illumination somehow? When I first hooked everything up I had the wires to the maplight hooked up to the opposite side of the bulbs from the switch. They didn't illuminate that way, and I then switched them to the proper sides. I wonder if that was enough to fry the module? I thought the worst I could do was blow a fuse, but maybe not. Anyone else doing this, learn from me, pay close attention to how you hook things up.