Footwell Lighting LEDs!

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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 02:29 AM
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Footwell Lighting LEDs!

Finally got around to installing new footwell lighting LEDs in my 08. As some of you may know, the 07+ already come with "ambient footwell lighting" but I decided to add some more just to make it brighter.

I wired them up like the door sills. Each individual footwell LED will only turn on when the door is open. Turns off when the door is closed. I didn't want to wire them to my parking / headlights because I find driving with them on at night to be very annoying and distracting. My girlfriend even said it's "Over embellishment" lol. So I believe having it only turned on when the doors open is just perfect.

I plan on ordering more and installing them in back seats by the end of next week.

I HIGHLY recommend this seller ( http://myworld.ebay.com/nyte-riderz-...id=p4340.l2559 ). His shipping is fast (probably because I live 20 miles away) and the LEDs are very bright and good quality. Price is very cheap too. I made sure not to buy them from overseas as shipping would take over a week.

Can't wait to install my aluminum pedals. It's gonna look really nice at night.







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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 02:37 AM
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Wow nice! I know it's probably the lighting from the camera's flash but in the 2nd picture it looks like you got some sort of Tron steering wheel!
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 02:37 AM
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Man you're becoming a LED whore.

You, Deathmetal, and Roger have way to many LEDs.
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 04:25 AM
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not feeling it, but nice work though
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 09:04 AM
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Too bright IMO, but maybe its the camera that makes it look that way. Whatsup with that steering wheel cover? lol

I think the OEM 07/08 footwell lighting with the cap removed is just perfect. Not over whelming but yet noticeable.
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 09:27 AM
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Looks good!
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 11:09 AM
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Looks nice
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 11:12 AM
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Awesome look.
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 11:27 AM
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Originally Posted by JTS97Z28
Too bright IMO, but maybe its the camera that makes it look that way. Whatsup with that steering wheel cover? lol

I think the OEM 07/08 footwell lighting with the cap removed is just perfect. Not over whelming but yet noticeable.
You're right! It is very bright. It's 6 LEDs with 3 chips per LED so the brightness is equivalent to 18 LEDs.

That's the reason why I wired them to only come on when the door opens. I believe its a good balance that way, compared to driving around with it turned on at night or anytime the parking lights come on.

I already did what you mentioned too. I took the diffuser caps off the OEM footwell lighting so its just a tad bit brighter. Not noticeable with my black floor mats though.
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 12:29 PM
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in the 2nd pic and 4th pic, it looks like you went nuts with a can of bright blue spray paint in your footwell. haha

it's a little too "in-your-face" for my taste, but it's always nice to see all the different things people do. thanks for sharing.
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 04:12 PM
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Nicely done =)

One of my next mods.
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 05:08 PM
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I would have to "wear my sunglasses at night", way bright. But I'm an old guy and more consewrvative...good work installing though.

I do have a question...do both passenger and driver footwells have the stock accent lights in an '08?

Last edited by GKinColo08TL; Jan 29, 2012 at 05:12 PM.
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 05:11 PM
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VIET....get a better camera bro LOL....

the sills + the led's look great....footwell leds look very bright.....here is mine:




Also with regards to the PM....did you decide which route you wanna take ?
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 05:26 PM
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Do they only come as 6 LED's ? Looks good but too bright.
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 06:03 PM
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Originally Posted by GKinColo08TL
I do have a question...do both passenger and driver footwells have the stock accent lights in an '08?
Yes the 2007 and 2008 TL's have ambient lighting filling both passenger and driver footwell. The base TL is blue lighting, and the Type S is red.
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 06:38 PM
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The nice thing about these LED strips is that you can go over them with a black Sharpie marker to tweak the brightness down to how you like it. I installed white strips that come on when the doors are open, and added red strips to the factory LED for nighttime driving (even bright red does not affect night vision).
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 07:40 PM
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Originally Posted by GKinColo08TL
I would have to "wear my sunglasses at night", way bright. But I'm an old guy and more consewrvative...good work installing though.

I do have a question...do both passenger and driver footwells have the stock accent lights in an '08?
Haha you are right, they are bright. Everyone posting seems like they didn't read what I said. I wired them to only come on when a door opens. Exactly like the door sills. So while driving they aren't turned on. Only when you park, open the door to step out. Or come out to your car and open the door to get in. Other than that, it stays off.


Originally Posted by swoosh
VIET....get a better camera bro LOL....

the sills + the led's look great....footwell leds look very bright.....here is mine:

Also with regards to the PM....did you decide which route you wanna take ?
LOL I know man, I was using my HTC Sensation as a camera because I don't have a dedicated camera. My LED strip is very bright. its 6LEDs with 3chip technology so its like having 18 total LEDs. It's also only a 6 inch LED Strip.

Thanks for replying back in the PM. I ended up wiring my ground to the door pin switch so it only comes on when the door is open. I thought about having it on when the parking lights or head lights are turned on, but I told myself that it would be very distracting at night and would probably get old after a week.

Your setup looks good. Honestly, I love the blue of my LED strip. It's very rich and very dark blue. Almost purple but not purple. I really don't know how to explain it, but I went through 4 different blue LEDs for my doors (1 from super bright leds, 1 360 style 5-LED from V-LEDs, and 1 360 style 13-LED from V-LEDs) and I finally ended up buying '2-LED high powered .5W flank style bulbs' from V-LEDs and they are very dark rich blue. Not to mention 3x brighter than the 360 style 13-LED blue bulb from V-LEDs and the funny part is that they are only 2-LED vs 13-LED!

My footwell are even richer and darker blue! I love em. The 3 previous blue LEDs I went through looked good and blue to me at the time, but now that I have what a real blue LED should look like, it makes my previous blues look aquamarine/teal/turqouise.

--

oh yeah and swoosh, do you have your rear seats wired up with footwell lighting too? I'm doing mines the end of this week, just placed a order earlier today. Should be here by tuesday and installed by tuesday/wednesday!

Last edited by vietxquangstah; Jan 29, 2012 at 07:44 PM.
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 09:58 PM
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Viet, I like the look-mine are done too, including the rear seat footwells.

I mounted mine against the rear seat kickboard, underneath where the seat overlaps the kickboard. That way they won't get kicked when people put their feet under the 2 front buckets.
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 10:09 PM
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@Viet ....I have my rear wired in too....as i told you, pretty soon will try to wire it to the MAX brightness switch in the console so i can turn the brightness level up and down....

since mine are not too bright they dont cause distraction + do attract some attention if you know what i mean.....but yeah i would install it to the ignition and have a kill switch

EDIT: since they are only on when the door is open, am very very glad they are that bright....also i hope you have some blue door LED's
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 10:22 PM
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Originally Posted by swoosh
@Viet ....I have my rear wired in too....as i told you, pretty soon will try to wire it to the MAX brightness switch in the console so i can turn the brightness level up and down....

since mine are not too bright they dont cause distraction + do attract some attention if you know what i mean.....but yeah i would install it to the ignition and have a kill switch

EDIT: since they are only on when the door is open, am very very glad they are that bright....also i hope you have some blue door LED's
Thanks and I sure do! I have a friend who just bought a $2,000 pro DSLR camera so we should be doing a photoshoot pretty soon in the near future. I'll try and get some high quality pictures of my footwell lighting to show how it really looks.

and yeah, if you could get it wired to the MAX BRIGHTNESS button to have the power to dim it that would be bad ass. The reason why I didn't want to have mines constantly running while driving at night was because I didn't have the ability to DIM it.

I plan on doing my rears in white
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Old Jan 29, 2012 | 10:32 PM
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a DSLR photoshoot will be badassssss......

and on white....stay consistent with color LOL....
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Old Jan 31, 2012 | 07:34 PM
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UPDATE! Ok I wouldn't call these footwell lighting, more like "Courtesy" lights because footwell lighting doesn't turn on when you open the door and only turns on when you are driving. Mines however are only on when the door opens and are off when you are driving.

The rears are white. My HTC Sensation isn't good at distinguishing colors so it looks very light purple, but I can assure you that it's white. More like 6k white. I wanted 5k, but couldn't find it. Still happy with end results.

Hater's gon' hate













If you're wondering why I didn't go with blue for the rear seats it's because I didn't want to over-do it with blue everywhere. I believe having blue everywhere is a bit too much. It's the reason why I didn't put blue LEDs in all my dome lights and get blue door sills. I wanted a nice clean contrast between blue and white and already having blue on the doors, I believed that having blue in dome lights, door sills, front and rear courtesy led strips is a bit over kill.

No offense swoosh! I'm sure your stuff turns heads ALL THE TIME, but I'm not really all about that. Plus my girlfriend already didn't like the idea of the led strips because she believed it was too "over-decorative". I still went with it anyways, but just tried to be balanced and clean.

Last edited by vietxquangstah; Jan 31, 2012 at 07:40 PM.
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Old Jan 31, 2012 | 08:37 PM
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Very nice looking. It looks like you mounted the rears like I did.
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Old Jan 31, 2012 | 08:39 PM
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Looks good!

Where'd you get your rear LEDs?
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Old Jan 31, 2012 | 09:14 PM
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Originally Posted by guitarplayer16
Looks good!

Where'd you get your rear LEDs?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/280811862387...#ht_4137wt_864

Very fast shipping. Was 1 day for me , but I live near him lol.

My fronts are 6 inch strips with 6 leds that are 3-chip technology.

My rears are 12 inch strips with 12 leds that are 3-chip technology each.

I mounted the rears under the seat exactly like you Steven Bell. I have the LEDs facing downwards towards the floor. I thought about mounting it so that the LEDs would face towards the back of the front drivers/passenger seats but it was way too bright, so I aimed them downwards.

To mount them, I used velcro that also had adhesive tape on the back of it. Simply removed the plastic to reveal the adhesive on the back of the velcro and attached that adhesive to the 3M side of the LED strip and used the velcro to stick to the carpet under the leather seat.
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Old Jan 31, 2012 | 09:22 PM
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Thanks!

Very tempted to order 2 (total of 4 strips), but I fear 12 inch led strips is overkill.

Wonder if there's any way to cut off half the leds to make it a 6 LED heheh
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Old Jan 31, 2012 | 09:32 PM
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Originally Posted by guitarplayer16
Thanks!

Very tempted to order 2 (total of 4 strips), but I fear 12 inch led strips is overkill.

Wonder if there's any way to cut off half the leds to make it a 6 LED heheh
There is! You can cut the strips every 2 inches (Or every 3LEDs) to cut it to necessary length. However, the excess that you cut off you will not be able to use. I say go for it! If 12 is over kill, simply cut it in half. If 6 inches is still too much than you can cut it down to 4 inches.

* Can be cut to 9, 6, or 3 inches long (cut between every 3rd LED)

* Comes with 2 ~ 18" long connecting wires (see gallery picture #1)
Or check this seller out. His prices are a little bit cheaper and offers in sizes from 4 inches, 6 inches, 12 inches, 18 and 24 inches! All of which are sold as Pairs (2) and not singles. You can also choose from WHITE, BLUE, or RED.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-4-6-12-18-...ht_3361wt_1269

Last edited by vietxquangstah; Jan 31, 2012 at 09:36 PM.
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Old Jan 31, 2012 | 09:42 PM
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Thanks broski.

I think I'll just order 6" LED strips instead of cutting stuff in half hahah
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Old Jan 31, 2012 | 11:26 PM
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damn nice Viet....looking awesome....looks better than i thought it would....

PS: in the last few pix you got both rear doors open right ? coz both footwell lights are on....
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Old Feb 1, 2012 | 01:21 AM
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looks good man. i've been thinking about doing the rears, next project.
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Old Feb 1, 2012 | 05:26 AM
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Originally Posted by swoosh
damn nice Viet....looking awesome....looks better than i thought it would....

PS: in the last few pix you got both rear doors open right ? coz both footwell lights are on....
Thank you sir! And yeah, the last two pictures both of the rear passenger doors are open that's why both rears are on. I wanted to see how it would look with just one side open with no flash and both sides open with no flash
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Old Feb 1, 2012 | 10:57 AM
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^^^ hahaha i did see that....but yeah seriously came out great....
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Old Feb 1, 2012 | 01:45 PM
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Is that your amp power wire in the 2nd pic? If so, re route that shit ASAP! Lol it should run thru a grommet in the firewall. or at least under the car, zip tied to...oh...fuel lines would work. Lol

Last edited by Dino81; Feb 1, 2012 at 01:48 PM.
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Old Feb 1, 2012 | 01:48 PM
  #34  
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Originally Posted by Dino81
Is that your amp power wire in the 2nd pic? If so, re route that shit ASAP! Lol
Sure is! I need to re route it.... but I don't know how. I heard of people doing it thru the brake pedal area but I have no idea how to do that. If you have some suggestions or help on how than that would be nice lol
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Old Feb 1, 2012 | 02:00 PM
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The install is straight forward - all you do is tap into wires, right?

I wish I had WeatherTech =(
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Old Feb 1, 2012 | 06:35 PM
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Originally Posted by guitarplayer16
The install is straight forward - all you do is tap into wires, right?

I wish I had WeatherTech =(
Yes sir... Better yet, if you have the illuminated door sills installed already than you can tap into those exact same wires. All I did was open the crimp (taps?) that I used to crimp the power and negative wires for the door sills and simply placed the wire to the LED strip into that same corresponding crimp and just simply got some pliers and re-crimped it using the same taps.

That way they operate just like the door sills. Both the LED strips and door sills turn on/off when the doors open/close

If you buy from "nyte-ryder-ledz" be sure to mention that "ravinazn326" sent you!

NOTE: I did have to get some extra wire to extend the negative wire and positive wire. They come with 1.5FT (IDK what that would be in metric terms lol) of + and - wire and that wasn't long enough... I had to cut about another 8 inches of some 18-20gauge wire and splice them and solder them (soldered them just to be safe and sure) to extend it so I would be able to reach the negative crimps on my door pin switch so I could tap the negatives into it!

Hope that was understandable... Anymore questions feel free to ask me

Last edited by vietxquangstah; Feb 1, 2012 at 06:45 PM.
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Old Feb 1, 2012 | 07:43 PM
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Thanks man!

I'm gonna wire ALL 4 leds to the domes so essentially if one door is open, they all turn on.
Or maybe wire the front two together and the back two together.

I'm planning on buying these but they don't ship to Canada FML
http://www.ebay.com/itm/White-Color-...ht_2379wt_1163

Anyone wanna re-route them up here for me? =P
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Old Feb 1, 2012 | 08:06 PM
  #38  
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I seen those also. I don't get why there are 3 separate wires coming out of each LED strip. There's a red (+) a black (-) and a brown (?)

Also it says that those can not be flexible. Not really a big deal since you are installing it in the footwells.
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Old Feb 1, 2012 | 08:40 PM
  #39  
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Originally Posted by vietxquangstah
I seen those also. I don't get why there are 3 separate wires coming out of each LED strip. There's a red (+) a black (-) and a brown (?)

Also it says that those can not be flexible. Not really a big deal since you are installing it in the footwells.
Yeah that IS weird.

I bet it would still work with just the + and -?
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Old Feb 1, 2012 | 10:56 PM
  #40  
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GP: ask the seller the question about the wires....i dont mind rerouting it to ya
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