On to more electrical stuff

Ok, on to some other small things I've been meaning to do. In the 308 dash panel, there are warning lights at each corner. These lights are in black plastic holders that are held on by plastic tabs. Over time, the plastic tabs get weak and can't hold the lights in the dash panel. All four of my lights were like this. I wrapped electrical tape around them, but it didn't really work that well. I found out that fellow F-chatter "sigmacars" owns a plastic molding company in Canada and he is reproducing these. They are exact duplicates of the original and they are cheap. So cheap that I bought a bunch of them in case I broke a few.



Installation is a breeze. Pull the old light holder out, pop out the colored lens and put the lens in the new holder. Reinstall the light holder and voila! Warning lights that actually stay in the dash!



Now that the weather is getting better and I'll be driving more, I decided I should finally install my keyless entry so I have a way to lock and unlock the car. As you'll recall, my original system flaked out and I bought a new Spal door lock kit and Viper keyless entry system. I installed the door locks a few months ago, but I didn't have a chance to put the keyless in yet. As it turns out, the Viper was a dud. The system is supposed to produce a negative pulse along one of two wires to trigger the power locks to lock/unlock. I bench tested the system and got no negative pulse. After futzing with it for a while, I tossed it aside and went back to my original Commando keyless entry system. It actually works fine with the Spal power door locks. Hurrah, now I can lock and unlock the car without using the key. Yes, the key does work, but not very well and I only want to use it as a backup in case the keyless fails.



After hooking everything up, I checked my current drain again. With the ignition off, my sources of drain are the clock, the stereo memory, power door locks and keyless entry. These add up to 28.6mA . It's a little more than my target of 25mA, but I guess I'll have to live with it.