I bought a Kia Soul+ when it came off of lease a few years ago. Best car I've ever owned. There's just been one small, niggling, on-going problem: The overhead courtesy-light that comes on when a door is opened and then after a few minutes fades-to-off. At least that's what's supposed to happen. There's actually two lamps that make up the courtesy lighting above the front seats (there's another above the rear seat). So what's been the problem is that beginning a couple of years after purchasing the car, the driver's side courtesy lamp became inconsistent, working sometimes, many times not. You didn't know when or what the lamp was going to do. Is this a big deal? Well, ask the other Soul owners that talk about this online in Kia forums. Like them, the inconsistency and perplexity of the lamp being usable, in such a well-designed and executed car just simply "rubs you wrong"! I stumbled on what I thought was a fix sometime ago, in one of the Kia forums, when one of the members stated he fixed his Soul's lamp by pulling the overhead console down, putting it on his workbench and "re-flowing" the solder on the two diodes that are on the top of the console "circuit" board. I put circuit in quotes because I've never seen a "circuit" board that looked anything like this one. Those diodes are the only discreet (individual and accessible) electrical parts on the consoles' board. There's nothing else visible, as the board itself is simply black injection-molded plastic with square holes in it. In two of these you find the courtesy lamps themselves, but other than those and the two diodes there's nothing there. I have no idea how Kia makes this setup work. So, I heated up the solder on the diodes and added fresh to it because the member who said this fixed his lamp not working properly added that by doing this you were eliminating Kia's "dry-solder" jobs, i.e. the diodes weren't able to connect cleanly and completely with the circuit board. Well, it worked! Well, for about a year-more-or-less, then the problem returned. I was ready to replace the console, but two things made me pause: First, the price of a new console was well over $100. Used ones were much less expensive, but I already have a used one; that and all those people on the forums have the same thing. So a used one was not a guaranteed fix. Second, so a new (read expensive one) was no guarantee that the problem would be fixed. I mean, Kia never put out a bulletin on this problem that I could find, meaning they probably "know" about the bad consoles, but they aren't going to pay to fix it. That also means that it's very likely that all those new expensive, replacement overhead consoles have the same bad lamp problem. In looking through more forums for an answer I did find something interesting: Some Souls had the problem on the drivers' side only; others had it on the passengers' side only; and some had it on both. But, like my Soul, many of these cars had the same problem with it being inconsistent. A while back I got interested in doing electronics repair, radios, power amps, etc. This problem with it being inconsistent just seemed so wrong because in most electronics they either work or they don't, so since I had access to the diodes I used my VOM meter, set to diode, and tested them. Sure enough, the drivers' side diode was bad (at least at the time I was testing it). So I ordered these Chanzon Rectifier Diodes and replaced both diodes. Outcome? The problem seems to have been corrected! They have been working, consistently, without fail for a couple of months now, and I'm fairly sure they will keep doing so. These are fine quality diodes and you cannot beat the price or convenience of buying them on Amazon. What a relief!
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