Strange bright flashing blue light inside door panel at night?

When a used car is sold, the dealer often does not know about the aftermarket mod made onto the car. I don't think you are going to get an answer from the dealer. There have been several posts here asking about aftermarket security devices, but it is hard to guess what it is without more detail. Any photo?

 

Sounds interesting.

Door trim is usually pretty straightforward to remove. If it were mine I would open it up, extract the gizmo, and post lots of pictures here.

 

Or it could have been installed by the original dealer and the previous owner never notices or cared to ask about the blinking light. Many dealers do install security devices on the cars they keep in their lot, but my understanding is that it is more often the original dealer with a brand new car that does this than the second dealer selling a used vehicle. In any case, photos and more detail will help.

 

Or the whole story about the driver door dent/fix/mishap was cover to install the gizmo, or for some mishap that occurred while installing it.

My mind doesn't always go quite that cloak-and-dagger, but it's been Monday all day today.

 

There is always the possibility that the worker left his flashlight / worklight inside the door. Cheap ones tend to have a blueish tint.

Car dealers frequently ship cars from one dealer to the next. I found that my car had "one owner" but the carfax shows that it was bought in two different cities a year apart, and then was traded at least once before it made it to my dealer.

 

You said it blinks at night, but does it blink when the doors are unlocked with the doors closed? How about with the door open? And are you sure it's coming from the door, and not from the driver's footwell? If it only blinks with the doors closed and locked, it's probably a security device.

 

If it were my car I would already have been into that door myself in person and taken the thing out. As I said, those trim panels are usually pretty straightforward to remove. If it is acting a bit like a tracker, I would not be very patient about getting it out.

I once had an engine replaced in the car I was driving at the time, when I lived in a fairly high car-theft area. I'd had the car for eight years since it was new and the only issues I'd had were some breakins and stuff taken from it, and I sort of figured I was past the peak risk for outright theft. But when I needed the engine, I looked for a shop with a good price for the engine and the job (maybe 1st mistake), and I didn't check their references much (maybe 2nd mistake), and end of story, not long after they swapped engines for me (I also celebrated with a nice paint job), the whole car got boosted and police found the sheet metal and carpet 3 days later.

I won't be able to prove this, but according to my acting theory, that shop keeps a high profit margin on engine swaps by installing each engine multiple times. They of course knew where I parked from my address on the work order, and the next time they had a customer needing that engine, they just sent somebody 'round to pick it up again.

 

If you have not looked into the door cavity, then you are making a lot of assumptions without a foundation. I can't figure out what path a beam of light can take to get from inside the door to illuminate the inside of the car. The trim panel is solid and opaque. Between the trim panel and the sheetmetal door is a white plastic barrier, also pretty much opaque. The window, when rolled up, has a metal bracket along the bottom that will block light. The only way light would get out of the door would be through the speaker grill IF the speaker was removed. You would have noticed and said something about that.

This brings us to the conclusion that it would have to be a deliberate installation intended for illumination in order for a bright blue light to light up the car from inside the door. Maybe a kid owned the car and had a light kit installed to make it look fancy as he cruised main street.

I doubt that the dealer's mechanic would open the door to fix something and leave behind a tracker installed by the company. Those things are not free.

 

You have to find where the light is coming from. Until then, everything is speculation.

Even if it is something benign, it's an increased parasitic load on your 12V battery. We already have enough to worry about regarding our batteries, there's no need to have additional drain. It'll end up failing earlier.

 

I bet it is a Karr alarm module mounted on the bottom of the dash, near the driver's footwell. There's a blue LED on the module.

In that location, it is possible that it can appear to be the driver's door being illuminated, but I don't know why the OP thinks it is coming from "inside" the door.

https://priuschat.com/index.php?posts/1993276

To the OP, get down into the driver's side footwell and look at the underside of the dash, above the parking brake, but below where your dash illumination dimmer switch is. Is there a gray plastic box or rectangle with a blue LED screwed into the outside of the panel?

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Like this:

 

I guess the OP disappeared?

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

I bet the op was eaten by the mysterious blue blinky thing.

 

The OP is now secretly circulating among us to spread the blue blinky th

 

LoL !