Interior lighting mods COMPLETE! (with pics)

Tj-zetec · 04-12-2007, 11:43 PM

I've been a busy little bugger over the last few weeks.

Inspired by some of the american forums and after repeatedly telling myself it WASN'T rice i decided to change the colour of all my interior lights from the dirty green to blue.

There's patchy information out there, all of it on the US built car which luckily wasn't too dissimilar, but a lot of the work was figuring it out as i went.

It took me a total of about 4 weekends but it could have been done a lot quicker if i hadn't needed to put the car back together in a working order every night.

Pics below.

I started with the passenger wide window switch

It's worth noting that this photo was taken during the day inside my garage which gets a fair amount of light. These turned out really bright, but i like it.

Next was the drivers side switches which required a little more work to disassemble.

This photo includes the headlight switch which took the most courage to pull apart because of the complexity of the switch assembly. This photo was taken at night, standing outside the car. Also really bright.

The HVAC, Aircon buttons and the clock were a bit of a headache.

The HVAC dials were a little bit of a dissapointment, i have seen guys change the colour of them but i'm not game enough to have a crack at it without a few spares on hand.

The clock however looks brilliant I think, I used the smallest LEDs i've ever seen.

Lastly was the guages.

The LCD screen and the guages are two separate jobs but i think they turned out great.

The needles were a bit of a challenge but i managed to fluke a solution. The blue bulbs wouldn't light up the orange needles, blue through orange just doesnt work. So i rummaged around pick n paythruthenose and pinched the needles out of a Mondeo and Transit van (turns out they're the same, but the ones in the mondeo had yellowed a little) They're the same length and the drive shaft is the same size but they're clear with a white backing so they light up blue.

This is a photo of the whole lot from the outside of the car which shows all the lights together with my floor lights (the pics is a little dark though, it's actually fairly bright) and my ST170 peddles which i snaffled last week off Ebay in the UK for 20 Pounds!.

i'm pretty chuffed with how it turned out. I didnt bother with the radio because it's got about 30 of those tiny leds that were in the clock and i'm not that crash hot with a soldering iron. I'm just gonna get an aftermarket deck next year.

I had to order some leds from melbourne so while i was waiting i rigged this little system up

I mounted two White cold cathode neon tubes in the boot wired in through the door circuit.
Thats the kick drum from my drum kit in that big black bag BTW, not a body :evil3:
Playing in a band, i'm always trying to load stuff in and out of my car in dark little alleyways behind pubs and clubs and the light in the boot is rubbish, so these give me plenty of light to see what I'm doing.
That and they were $10 each from jaycar and my GF was at work all weekend and i was bored and looking for something to do.

Eventually I'll get around to writing a "How-to" on all the work i did. I took a swag of photos while i was doing it and if you lot are interested I'll put one together.

4dlvr · 05-12-2007, 12:39 AM

looks mint, nice work. wayyy better then standard
i was thinking about it but probly too much effort for me to put in
good on ya

FOCUSonTHIS · 05-12-2007, 07:39 AM

I think u will have a few people lining up for that lol

zetec1 2005 · 05-12-2007, 08:03 PM

The blue looks great mate.good job

GSR · 05-12-2007, 09:03 PM

fantastic job and very inspiring.

BlackLS · 06-12-2007, 12:10 AM

Well done.. BTW it is rice :P

You have a PM

Fast Eddie · 06-12-2007, 02:58 PM

Brilliant job there and I think the time and the effort was definitely worth it, going by the photos. I'd definitely do my window switches but in addition would like to do the Cruise control buttons if possible.

Tj-zetec · 06-12-2007, 05:48 PM

Should be possible. i don't have cruise in mine, they'll either be 3mm LEDs which you can bag from jaycar for about $1.40 each or they'll be smds which are cheap as dirt. I got mine from ledsales.com.au who are based in melbourne, I paid $0.08 each!. had to make up a $10 order tho.