i read a post that if you cut the red wire on the clock it will not dim anymore when you turn your lights on. so i did that but at nite it is to bright. i was wondering if i could put a resistor so it would be not to bright at nite and not to light in the morning.

 

picky picky

hmm i'd try and figure out how much voltage is coming accross the "red" wire you mentionned, which makes the lights dimmer when you turn the lights on.

we'll say 12V is running to the clock and when the lights are on, it goes down to 6 volts. You'd probably want something in the middle right? we'll say 9 volts.
to find the resistor to use use r=v/i
we'll say "i" is 1 amp and "v" is 3 (3 volts to remove to get down to 9)

Now hopefully someone electronically inclined will help out here.

but if it was upto my calculations i would end up with r=3/1
which would give me 3. so you would need a 3ohm resistor. But that doesn't feel right, even thuogh it probably is.

http://webhome.idirect.com/~jadams/e...esist_calc.htm

this link will tell you the color code to use.
Basically Black, Orange, Black, Gold.

If someone could check my caculations, that would be great

With this resistor, you would have a light that is in between bright, and the dim setting when lights are on.

 

I think a variable potentiometer say 500 ohms @1amp should do the trick. Dial in the brightness you want and then tuck it behine the clock.

 

yeah i was thinking that too... but figured it might get in the way or sumthin?

 

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread....t=dim%2A+clock

 

I doubt the brightness is controlled by the voltage in the dimmer wire. 12v in the dimmer wire probably just signals the clock circuit to switch to "dim mode." This would mean making it "less dim" would require getting into the PCB of the clock unit.

But, if you have nothing better to do...

 

You could just put a switch on the red wire so you could choose bright or dim yourself. If it is just a signal you could hook the red wire up to a constant power source and be able to choose bright/dim independant of the headlights being on.

 

I'd put a variable resistor in there and decide what was the right amount of light, then remove it and measure it with a voltmeter and go to rat shack and buy the closest resistor to that that I could.

Jack

 

now that's a cool idea!

 

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread....t=dim%2A+clock
It works. The clock will dim with the radio and A/C control head if you do as described in the above thread. The dimmer switch is a potentiometer so why install a seond one? The only drawback is that when the clock is dimmed very low it seems to have a little "strobe" effect. It's no big deal. You prob won't keep it that dim anyway.