diode fire

i drive a 03 pontiac gp. instead of putting a pin switch in my trunk, i decided to run a wire from the light in my trunk to the positive trigger on the alarm. that same wire goes to the interior lights. that way if a light is triggered via door opening, the alarm goes off. the problem was when a door opened, it showed my trunk was open. so i realized i needed to run a diod on the wire going to the trunk light. when i put the diod on, it heated up and melted the electric tape. Why did the diode get so hot?hey, everyone has got to start somewhere. but ill learn

Sounds like the way you had it wired the interior domelight was not properly isolated from the trunk light, and was turning it on. A 1 amp diode would be fine for the trigger, but not to turn that light on for any decent amount of time. You would want to split the positive trigger output with TWO diodes (band side facing the module), and run 1 to the positive trigger domelight wire, and the other to the positive trigger trunk wire. The other option is that you wired a positive to a negative with only the diode between the two, and it smoked the diode. I'm thinking this may be the case since the trunk trigger in this vehicle is the RED / black (-) and you said you were using the positive trigger. I believe the domelight in this vehicle is negative trigger as well though. Let us know what wires you tapped into and maybe we can give some more help. Mike