How to turn interior lights off when doors open?

[001_ATLANTIS]

Bit of an anorak question but I'm certain some dibber will know!

We are finally hoping to do Silver Moon Drive-In this year. Almost done it several times but never quite got there. It's a long story! Anyhow... I digress!

I appreciate that you need to turn off your engine and all of your lights when parked up. However if you are sitting in the car with the doors open (can't imagine otherwise given that there will be no Air Con working) how do you get the interior lights to turn off for the duration? They normally come on when the doors/tailgate are open.

I can also see potential problems with keeping the radio turned on for 2 hours or so to receive the sound. The last thing you want is a flat battery at the end of the night.

Hopefully someone has been here and solved this one.

[Mr Tom Morrow]

Difficult to say without knowing the car.

Sometimes actually up on the light itself.
Sometimes on the dial that you use to turn the lights on and off - the outside lights I mean

We drive a luxury so normally you go onto the touch screen, select 'menu' and then into 'configure lighting'. That way you can dim, turn off, change time delay etc

I would collect the car, have a mooch in it to see whats obvious then Google the car make and you will find a PDF manual online.
Noticing Alamo dont seem to leave the handbook in the glove box much anymore?

[footman]

As Mr Tom has posted, every car is different with regards to disabling the door switch activated interior lighting.
My own car has about 8 interior lights that come on and most do not have a manual switch to turn them off.
You would need to refer to the manual for that vehicle.
As far as the battery goes, a normal car battery would run a 12v radio for many hours without any noticeable drain on the battery. No worries there

[bLaZeR666_uk]

Most cars that I am aware of the lights will turn off anyway after 30 min or 1 hour. Wouldn't worry too much about it TBH. You could probably run the battery for a day or so on the interior lights.

[Guest]

we went a number of years ago and could run our engine so that we had aircon, not sure if that is still the case

[Guest]

I think in my car the lights go out when my wife opens her...

DOOR! :-) Don't blame me - Mike Wazowski told me that one!

[dave]

Can you just put the windows down rather than leave the doors open? Or am I missing something as never been to a drive in movie!

[slave1]

Don't worry about the lights, plenty of cars there last year that left their driving lights on and no one came out and said anything, you'll be fine with interior lights...

[Mr Tom Morrow]

Maybe its just my car here - I was just sat in it on the passenger side checking something in the Service Book for a while and the interior lights went out after 2 minutes

[olgaandcoda]

Originally Posted by Mr Tom Morrow

Maybe its just my car here - I was just sat in it on the passenger side checking something in the Service Book for a while and the interior lights went out after 2 minutes

See more...

Mine fade out pretty soon as well. I did have a recent flat battery when stuck in a traffic jam. I left the radio on and switched the engine off, and then ran the battery down, after about ten minutes. I think it was because a lot of cars have so many gadgets that drain the battery quickly, heated screen, seats etc. I was started up by a breakdown truck flagged down by the police! AA had been turned away as the road was closed for the accident ahead.