Dome Lights

We have a 99 Chevy Tahoe & recently the dome lights would not go off after having the AC serviced. We called the shop and since it was the end of the day they suggested either removing the lights or diconnecting the battery and bring it in the next day. On the way to the shop the next day, the lights went on & off twice. Naturally at the shop, nothing happened. They cleaned a contact on the back cargo door and said let them know if it happened again. Two days later after no problems, we left for a week of vacation. When we got home the dome lights were on. They were off when we left. The car started, so obviously they were not on too long. We will take it back in next week if we can get an appointment. In the meantime, do you guys have any suggestions as to what to look for?

I assume there isn’t some sort of warning indicator in the dash for a ‘Door Open’ signal that would help with this trouble. I would first suspect a problem with the driver’s side door since it is used the most. Check the manual control switch for the dome light also.

I have a 96 Tahoe with a similar problem. The dome light buttons are push buttons so I don’t know if they are in the On or Off position. The round dome lights have been off but are found turned on the next day or a week later. When the lights have been turned Off I’ve knocked fairly hard on the dome light assembly and they turned back on telling the switches are not working correctly. Since I don’t know for sure if they are truly Off I just pulled the fuse until I can figure out what to do. It doesn’t look like the switches are replaceable so I may have to replace the whole light assembly. So I can at least have my door lights I thought about replacing the fuse and just removing the round dome light bulbs but I can’t tell if I’ll be able to make the lenses stay once I take them out.

Isn’t there a small slot between the lens and the assembly. Stick a screwdriver in and pop the lens out.

Apparently, this vintage did not have the RAP feature yet. Retained Accessory Power is a feature they developed to shut everything off after a preset time (5 minutes) of non-use. Here’s an excerpt from the Owner’s Manual- I would check the dome light thumbwheel setting to make sure it’s not partially set to have them on all the time and so it’s intermittently activating or there is something wrong with the switch causing them to come on-

Thanks. It looked like there might be some kind of adhesive around the lens so I thought it might not stick back in when I replace it. I guess it could be an old sticky O-ring or something.