aCUREa

I finally got around to wiring some LEDs into the interior and footwells. I got this idea from the original footwell LED thread a few years ago, so I figured I’d show everyone how I did mine. This is not a DIY, so don't use it as one since I left out important safety precautions. Use the original thread for that or ask. But for now, just take a look at my method.

Anyway, my idea was to extend the stock blue ambient lighting theme to my own blue/purple ambient theme. I always thought purple looked good with the blue. I not only did the footwells, but also the cubby/ashtray area too. Everything is basically the same as the original footwell idea except for a few things.

First of all, I recommend this site for 5mm pre-wired LEDs rather than SBL:
http://ledaccentlights.net/store/ind...index&cPath=10

^^These only draw 3mA rather than the common 20mA you see with most other 5mm. Plus the ones from SBL fall apart... not good.

So I made an array of LEDs using blue and UV. Its like a tree branch of LEDs wired in parallel:

(I added one more purple LED to the cubby branch after this pic)

I used these 2-pin connectors so that I can easily replace LEDs in the future.

http://www.autolumination.com/connectors.htm

There are 8 LEDs on the array total, 3 blue, 5 purple. Each footwell got one blue and one purple. Then I put one blue and two purple in the cubby, and finally one purple in the ashtray.

Here is a diagram of the array I made so you can see how I wired it:

^^pretty good considering my shortage of 2-pin connectors.

Here's one of the footwell branches below. Reflective surface bounces the light directly down the hole:


Here's the cubby (3 LEDs) also with the reflective plate. Now my cubby is blue and purple instead of just purple like it was before.



And here's the whole rig:


Then I cut the cubby socket off completely and soldered on the array:


Here's where I ran the wire for the ashtray.


Here's the old cubby socket. I'm gonna solder it into the glove box to continue the blue/purple theme there as well.


Overall its subtle and looks good. I used 8 LEDs at 3mA each, so it is 24mA total drawn from the cubby wire. When I cut the cubby wire, it looked to be about 22AWG.

Anyway, 8 LEDs sounds bright, but the purple ones are so dim they’re almost not there. The blue ones are bright, but there’s only 3.

Here are some pics. My camera is not that great, so this is the best I could do for now. Its real hard to see the purple in these pics. It looks much much better in person of course.










This is only phase 1. Later, I plan to tap some more into other wires. But lemme know what you think.

samnguyen

look nice bro. I was thinking to do mine like that too. How hard was the wiring? Thanks for the site too, I used those same led to made my fog lights.

aCUREa

The wiring was very easy. Just don't make the same mistake others have made by forgetting to kill the battery before cutting wires. All I did was converge the LED red wires and connect the junction to the red cubby wire. Then do the same with the black wires.

Stick with parallel circuits rather than series.

Making the array, mounting the LEDs, and running the wires took longer than soldering to the cubby wires.

By the way, how did you make your fog lights? Do you have pics?