How To Work On Car for Hours Without Killing Battery?

How do you set 996 so you can work on it for hours when you have to have the doors and frunk open (and/or possibly the engine cover up?) When a door is open, lots of lights in the door, above the mirror and the dash are illuminated. When the frunk is open, the light is on and draining the battery. When the engine cover is up, a light is draining the battery. If I lock the car to get the lights to shut off, I am afraid it will set the alarm off. I am often going from location to location when working on a complex problem, so I am always opening and closing things. Thanks!

The lights above the mirror can be turned off with the switch. I removed the bulb from the frunk and the engine bay. Can also plug a trickle charger in if you are really worried about draining the battery down.

You can open both doors and frunk then"trip" the latches ( closed) with a screw-driver and it keep from draining the battery and as long as you didn't use the fob to lock, the alarm will not be set... Just remember to pull the inside handles when your done before you attempt to close the door or frunk

I always just pull the fuse and that turns them all off.

Pull the negative cable off the battery terminal. This is sometimes the first step in working on some parts of the car anyway. Otherwise, you can just hook up a battery charger while you are working on the car.

Thanks for all of the replies.

I'm not sure what's involved to do it, but replacing all of those bulbs with LED's would likely minimize the problem. LED's use about 1/6th the energy. Sometimes the fact that they use so little energy can trigger warnings, so best to research a bit before attempting to replace them.

I have been considering switching to LED. The OEM bulbs have to suck a decent amount of energy considering how hot they get.

cteck

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Does avoid the airbag check light? I am assuming it would, but it�s a pita trip if I need to have it reset.

You should use a battery maintainer, unless you don't have a power outlet available. The Ctek is perfect and clearly extends the life of your battery. At worst, disconnect the battery, but be careful not to close the trunk first.

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It's just the interior lights fuse. I do it all the time when leaving all the doors open for hours. You can also just disconnect the battery. That you should definetly do if working on anything electrical.

Disconnecting the battery during extended doors /frunk open repairs is probably the safest thing for DIY'er to keep from killing the battery.. But the Professional Techs NEVER do this unless "necessary" due to Customer Complaints of lost Radio pre-set stations, lose of seat memory positions, lose of learned idle speed strategy ( if TB is dirty), the need to spend time on resetting one-touch features such as sun-roof/windows rear view mirror dip ect......They just use a screw-driver to quickly latch the doors/frunk and/or put a charger on the battery ... And when changing a battery we use a "memory saver" ( a very small 12v battery) that plugs into the cigar lighter to save all memories and pre-sets..never breaking the circuit...

I replaced all my interior bulbs, the trunk bulb and the engine lid bulb with LEDs that draw a lot less energy. Note that after half an hour, the interior lights, the trunk light and the engine lid light will all turn off. With LED bulbs, any bulb that's on for half an hour will draw minimal energy.

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Would love to hear more about your LED conversion. Is there a kit you can buy with all the correct LED replacement bulbs? Are they brighter than the original bulbs? Is the color temperature roughly the same (is the color whiter or blue-white)? Did you have any warnings from the unexpectedly low current draw bulbs?

I have converted to LED in other cars. When I put the bulb number into the car part store websites, it offered me both the standard and LED versions. I bet you can buy them for a whole lot less on Amazon versus what I paid at the local car part store. Color temperature can be an issue. The first ones I bought were much cooler.

I replaced most of mine with LED. Remarkable the difference. Frunk, engine, overheads, door cards, license plate and fog lamps. No warnings and no problems. And that was about 10 years ago. Got to be more alternatives now, and perhaps better.

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I converted every light on the car to LED. There are some kits, but the kits usually have inferior quality LEDs. I went with Diode Dynamics for most of the bulbs. Definitely brighter than original bulbs, and usually a tad cooler in temperature, unless you can find 3000K bulbs (like Diode Dynamics). Zero warnings. As the other person said, I leave the frunk/engine cover open for days at a time... the car does turn off the lights after ~30 mins. Never had the battery drained from it.

I still have incandescents on my car, but +1 for Diode Dynamics and their excellent products.

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I think this feature appeared in 2002. My 2001 doesn't do it and my 2003 does.

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My 2000 frunk light turns off eventually -- have never timed it though.

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I have a 1999

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I never trust/rely on the auto shutdown strategy .....sometimes they work, sometimes they don't ... Yep, anecdotal experiences in automotive technology can lead many many people down the "stinky rabbit hole" ...

Quotes source post: 20086808

All my bulbs are a pure bright white (I think 5,000 Kelvin). Definitely whiter than the regular incandescent bulbs (which are around 3,000 Kelvin), but not bluish. I don't have any error codes. There are kits, but I bought my LED bulbs individually. The kits are available (I think) at Pelican Parts and Suncoast Porsche. I bought my LEDs from Ebay, iJDMtoy.com and Superlumination.com. The trunk and engine lid bulbs are 39mm festoon bulbs, torpedo type from Superlumination. The door puddle lights and map light bulbs are168/194 wedge type replaced with LEDs, part no. 10-011 from iJDMtoy.com. The visor vanity mirror lights require 36mm x 6mm fuse type bulb, replaced with "Xenon White" 36mm 3-SMD 5050 LED (3 per side) from Ebay. Interior dome light is 41mm long torpedo style, replaced with LED part no. 10-023 from iJDMtoy. If you want to replace the rear license plate bulbs, those are (2 of them) C5W torpedo type 36 mm long, replaced with 39mm Canbus LEDs from Superlumination. My front side marker lights are chromed-over incanscents, because I have clear side markers (not the original amber ones). With the chromed-over bulbs, you don't see any amber when my lights are off. But when the side markers flash or they're on, they light up amber. As you can see, it took me quite some time to replace my bulbs with LEDs. When buying LEDs, make sure you get bulbs that light up on at least two sides, preferably ones that light up all around. Also, note that LEDs are polarity-specific. If it doesn't light up one way, reinsert the other way.

Wow. A super helpful post. Thanks for investing the time to post all of the specific information.