That'* on the list of things to test...

Cool feature! You could get around the time it takes for them to turn on by wiring the caps in parallel to the existing circuit and use a couple of diodes.. That way the stock circuit would control the "on" functions and the new curcuit would supply power once the stock circuit shuts off.

BTW, it seesm to me I might have seen something aftermarket (if not the schematics) to do exactly this somewhere online. No idea where I ran into it, though.

hrmm... The SAFEST** way to do this is through a circuit using a timer and PWM (Pulse Width Modulation).

Instead of resisting (which turns the extra power to heat) to dim the lights, it turns the lights on and off so fast that the light appears dimmer. The slower it flashes the dimmer the light appears. And it does not waste energy on heat which could be important with the amount of power the lights draw.

This is only for the electronically inclined, but it is not a hard circuit to build so if you found someone that had spare time and knows electronics they could whip one up for you.

This summer i am planning to do this to my car as well...

*BE CAREFUL WITH CAPACITORS... you would need alot of them and touching one that is charged and big enough for the car could be FATAL... so PLEASE use CAUTION

I thought about that as well, but you run into issues with dimming to full off via PWM -- eventually you're going to reach a pulse width that will be present itself to the eye as an annoying blink unless you use a high enough frequency, and high frequencies demand a load driver that'* capable of quick switching. Solid-state relays are probably out (most of the ones I've worked with aren't capable of turning on and off reliably hundreds or thousands of times per second), and they're expensive anyway, so you're most likely stuck with power FETs. Depending on how much power the interior lights draw, that might get expensive too.

It also might be difficult to get a 555 timer to automagically start dimming itself; most of the PWM circuits I've constructed used a pot to manually vary the pulse width. I'll look at it and see if there'* an easy way of doing it (unless you've got the answer already, in which case I'll shut the hell up ).

-b

Lol i do not have a definate answer yet thanks for the input i wsa hoping someother electronic guru would pop in here because im not very advanced yet... but i see that makes sense about the low dimming... I think FETs are the answer in a nice box cause they'll make some nice high frequency noise like speed controllers proly right?... I do not think they draw more than 10A total so it wouldnt be terribly expensive but your right it wont be cheap either...

Im just kinda begining my delve into PWM...

And as far as auto diming i do not have an idea yet... i am along your same lines of manual pot dimming... but i mean really, it cant be THAT hard can it

Hi see if this circuit will work?

http://www.csgnetwork.com/dimmerdelayproj.html

I dont know if it will work but it sounds good? I found that and some more last night that i will post when i get home and find them again...

Actually, that looks pretty good. He'* right though, that load driving transistor is going to be creating a lot of heat while it'* dimming -- you'd definitely need a pretty beefy transistor and a nice heatsink.

But that circuit is beautiful in its simplicity. Good find

-b

THank you lord for simplicity... its good to hear that it will work so now to get to that..

I can save my PWM circuit for my over 1 million color changing lights (building myself with primary color LED'* )

Also remember that the 87-91 Bonnys have 11 interior lights and the 92-99 have 10, so the circuit will have to be designed to run 10 bulbs instead of 1 without dimming too fast.