VX "headlight on" signal question
 

This question is about the alert sound you here when the ignition is off and the headlights are on. From looking at the diagram, it appears that Honda put the light on signal in with the stereo. I believe that the red-black wire is the light on signal, but I don't see a ground associated with it. How does this wire in to the stereo... or am I way off base? I am afraid that I will be stranded because I am a knuckle-head and will likely walk away from the car with my lights on like I did yesterday. I was lucky in that there was enough juice to turn her over, but I might not be that lucky next time. Any advice on how to get this working would be greatly appreciated.

I've jump started mine on a couple occasions because I left the lights on. I have some jumper cables in my car for when that happens. The beeping noise that the car makes when you turn it off seems to have no bearing on headlights. The VX does not have head light sound warning as far as I know.

A agree. The VX has NO reminder for when you leave your lights on. Do a search on Honda-tech and you should be able to find a how-to to wire one up.

You can hook a buzzer up to such and such fuses in the fuse box to go off if you leave the lights on, not hard at all.

Easy for you to say, I'm electronically challenged! Do you have a diagram or some ideas on how? If I hook it up to the light fuse it would ring while I was driving with the lights on, right?!! I am open to suggestions.

I forget exactly how to do it, but I think you hook the power side up to the fuse for the lights and the ground up to something to only becomes grounded with the key out, like the rear defroster or something? I forget exactly. Just mess around...

Hook it up to the dome light switch and light PW output. Ehm... Get one of those $1.50 relays (damn u inflation11!1 ;)) und hook the PW up to the light fuse, unless it's relayed, then use the relay output, so if the lights are on when you open the door the current from the dome light being on will engage the relay, which will trigger the buzzer, or blinky light, or whatever ya wanna put in to alert yerself to lights on+open door from the powered lights. GND goes to GND, w/ the +12V from the active device and power going to the thing that alerts ya to it's activity. :thumbup:

edited cuz of b33r :D

https://www.torontocivics.com/article...er/buzzer.html

Go to Radio Shack or similar store for piezoelectric buzzer for $3. You will need to find out which fuses apply for your car since the 91 civic did not match my VX. It's easy enough to find - the fuse descriptions are on the back of the fuse cover.

I have not drained by battery since I installed this!

Excellent info. Thank you for the link. I will get a chance to try it tomorrow.

thanks for the info!

I did the same thing on my 89 civic and on a 87 CRX. I think the defrosters (for my civic any way) were a switched ground, so the buzzer grounded when the car was off and it had power from the fuse b/c the headlights were on.

Worked like a charm! In my VX I put the red wire in fuse 19 and the black in fuse 13. The buzzer is a bit obnoxious even after I stuffed it with cotton and wrapped it in tape, but there is NO WAY I will leave the lights on again! Thanks for the great tip.

If anyone's interested in why that setup works: The beeper/buzzer/whatever gets power from the lighting circuit. That's pretty obvious... Lights are on, buzzer goes off, ok.
The next part is kinda strange at face value: The buzzer gets grounded to a source of ignition switched power. If you're even somewhat familiar with electrical circuits, you're probably thinking "What? You're supplying power to both terminals of the buzzer? How will that work?" The answer is that it won't... At least while the ignition is on. When you switch the ignition off, you're cutting off the power supply to that fuse. The rest of the electrical gear down stream of that fuse (the defroster in this case) is still hooked up but now unpowered. That means when the ignition is off, you can send power down that wire (via the fuse slot connection) from your own source and the power-starved devices it feeds will use whatever they can get. The buzzer uses so little power (maybe 1/20th of an amp?) that the downstream devices don't appear to turn on, even though they're conducting the power to ground.