With Wings As Eagles: Craig P. Steffen's Blog

until the paperwork is done

2008 February 14 00:35

I finally found a program to create electrical schematics. It's called gschem and it's packaged under Ubuntu. That package seems to be a full electronic design suite, which I don't need, but it does make nice schematics.

I'm using it here to document the change I made to my beetle's electrical system yesterday. I don't have a driver's side door switch that works, and they don't make them any more. Here's the system as it's designed:

Notice that neither part of the upper part of the left door circuit is connected to ground. Notice also that the right door switch only has one contact, and that grounds to the case (which grounds to the door frame). The door switches are shown in the "door closed" position, and the ignition key switch is shown in the "key out" position.

To duplicate the functionality of the left door switch, I installed a right door switch (single pole, case-grounding only) in the left door switch spot, and wired in a relay to duplicate the double-pole isolating structure.

The system works, although there's a loud click when the dome light turns on when you open the driver's door.