This project started because I wanted a little more light inside my 09 Passion, especially in the foot-wells. The only version of foot-well lights that I could find among our vendors was the Brabus version, and it appeared that they would cost something in excess of $500. I just couldn’t justify that price for a little extra light.

My goals for this project were first, keep the cost down, I was thinking the $20 range sounded good.

Second, I did not want to tap into my Smarts electrical system. I wasn’t so much afraid of messing up the electrics (although I’m pretty sure I could do that), but it was more the idea that with a new car, still under warranty, I didn’t want to complicate anything. By having a separate, stand alone system for these lights, I hoped to ease any other electrical troubleshooting I might experience.

A third goal was a semi-rule of mine, "on a new car, no new holes drilled and nothing attached that cannot be UN attached without causing damage."

Finally, I wanted a system that would light up when I opened the door and turn off when I closed the door as well as give me the option to manually turn off the lights if I wanted to open the door for an extended period of time for cleaning, or car shows, etc. I didn’t care if the lights had a fade-off feature.

All of this, and for less than $20 - if possible.

I started with the purchase of three small LED lights called "StickNClick." They were small enough to fit in the limited space under the dash, and at $10 for all three, the price was right.

click to enlarge  The next purchase was the most expensive of the entire project. I bought two magnetic reed switches. These are the type of switches you will find on many burglar alarm systems. I needed the type of switch that would allow me to choose either "normally open" or "normally closed." Each of these switches consists of two parts, the reed switch part with its wire terminals. And the magnet "trigger" part. Each two piece switch cost me $8.36 at a local electronics store.

There were also some other parts which you may or may not need, or use. I’ll mention each one as the assembly proceeds.

The first thing I did was to test each LED to make sure that it was working properly before I took it apart. Then I opened up each of the LEDs I was going to use to get to the internal wires and the on/off switch. I needed to use a very thin-shanked Phillips screwdriver to remove the three small screws holding everything together. The back of the LED case simply twists off to insert the 3 AAA batteries.

click to enlarge  You should now have access to the three small screws holding the case together. Undo these screws, turn the case right side up, and everything just pulls apart.

WARNING: If you use this particular LED, there are three small coil springs sitting in the main housing. If you insist on turning the housing back (upside down) at this point, the springs will fall out and find places to hide. If you look at the picture below, you can see the three springs I eventually recovered from the floor (red arrows).

The picture below also shows the main parts of the LED after you have it apart. I would think that any "push on/push off" type of LED would work about the same. All you really need to do is interrupt the power running from the battery pack of the LED to the LED switch and splice in your own wires, which are then connected to whatever switch you want. I choose to use a magnetic reed switch, but I could have used a micro "on/off" switch, a push button switch, or any number of other types of switches.

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The next part gets a little fussy, especially for a ham-handed person like me. Take a look at the picture below.

click to enlarge  In this picture, the LED is dead center. The on/off push switch is the white square thingy just to the right of the LED (blue arrow).

The tip of the hobby blade is pointing at a very thin red wire. This is the wire that must be cut if you want your LED to go on and off as the door opens and closes. This wire is very thin/small/delicate, call it what you will, but be careful here. The yellow arrow points at what I think is the best place to drill a hole in the side of the LED case for the "supplied" wire to enter. The size of the hole, of course, depends on the size of the wire you supply.

On my first LED (pictured below), I cut the red wire, very delicately stripped the insulation off about ½ inch of wire and twisted it together with one of the supplied wires. I finished this connection off with just a dab of solder.

On the second LED, I employed what I think, is a better solution. Instead of cutting the red wire, I just applied the hot soldering iron to the terminal where the red wire was soldered to the battery lug (green arrow) and in just a few seconds the old solder melted enough to allow me to slip the red wire out of the lug. The other supplied wire now attaches to this, now vacant, battery terminal (lug). A dab of solder will hold it in place. I gave the supplied wire a dab of hot glue in several places – just to keep everything from moving about too much.

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The "supplied "wire, meaning the wire YOU supply, is shown by a yellow arrow. After the wire enters the LED case it splits in two. Note that in this photo, the LED case has been rotated clockwise so that the "supplied" wire appears at the 11 o’clock position. The blue wire points to the LED on/off switch. The black arrow points to the wire that attached to the cut (or unsoldered) thin red wire. The other supplied wire snakes under the diode to the battery lug (green arrow).

click to enlarge  NOTE: The "supplied" wire should not be too thick. I used one of those "double wires" like you find on small plug-in transformers. Mine happened to be from an old wall transformer that had been used to recharge an electric shaver (long since lost).

You could use two separate small wires. Just remember, we’re not talking about a lot of voltage here, these are just triple A batteries, so keep the wires pretty thin. The length of wire you will need depends on where you place the lights in the foot-well and where you place the switches. I only used about a foot to a foot and a half of the "double" wire on each side.

After looking up under the driver’s side dash, I couldn’t find any place where I wanted to attach the LED directly, so I decided to install the LED with a Velcro type of hold-down strap looped around the black cloth covered wiring harness running to the dashboard area. This would do no damage to the car, and the light could be moved around to get the best coverage. Instead of attaching the LED directly to the Velcro strip, I made a sort of harness to hold everything together.

click to enlarge  In this picture, I have cut the "ears" off one set of my switches. I have painted the reed part (red arrow) silver because it will go on my silver Tridion shell. I would assume that if you have a black Tridion, you would want to paint the switch black.

The trigger switch (blue arrow) has been painted satin black because it will be attached to the black plastic door liner. Also seen in the picture is the strip of black Velcro (green arrow) and a (white) 3 inch plastic pipe plug I got from Home Depot or Lowes for about 50 cents.

click to enlarge  The picture below shows why I chose this particular plug – the LED fits right in it.

Although it doesn’t show in the picture, the "hook" side of the Velcro strip has been hot glued to the flat side of the white plug. If you glue it the other way around, the hooks on the Velcro want to cling and catch on the cloth that covers the wiring harness while you are trying to loop it around the harness. This is not a pretty situation. On your knees, twisted around, looking up under the dash, trying to get both hands up into a very tight space, while a hot trouble light keeps bumping against your tender forehead. Go ahead; ask me how I know about this in such great detail. Trust me; keep the "fuzzy" side of the Velcro to the cloth and not the "hook" side.

Both pictures below are under the dash, driver’s side.

CLICK EITHER PICTURE TO ENLARGE

  GREEN=fuse box  BLUE= the LED  RED=cloth covered wiring harness    YELLOW=the yet to be attached "double" wire

In this picture, the silver (gray) arrow points to the steering column and the green arrow now points to the top of the brake pedal. The other colors are the same as the top picture.

On the passenger side it was a little easier. If you look at the picture below, I am pointing to one of the holes in the metal cross-member. This is not the Tridion shell. I’ve already run a self tapping screw all the way up to make sure it would fit and would actually hold weight. I already had the ¾ X8 self-tapping screw laying about – no cost.

CLICK EITHER PICTURE TO ENLARGE

I used a bit of plastic that had been the top of an electrical panel. Home Depot and others carry these. I only used about ½ of the panel. I attached (glued) the LED to the plastic panel and then screwed the panel to the metal cross-member.

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Once the LEDs are in place you can start placing the reed switch and the magnet switch. The wires from the LED attach to the outside terminals of the reed switch. One of the terminals on the reed switch is labeled "COM" for Common, and the other outer terminal is labeled "NC" for Normally Closed. It doesn’t matter which one of the "double" wires goes to which terminal.

I used 3M "Command" picture hanging strips to hold my switches. Unlike Velcro, these hanging strips are supposed to be removable without harming the finish or leaving a gummy residue. We shall see about that.

In the pictures below, the edges of the strips show up very white. I should have used a black Magic Marker or painted them black before I put them on. Also, these strips may not be strong enough to hold the magnet trigger. Mine are holding fine for now, but if they give me any trouble, I plan to swab the plastic "hooks" of the 3M strips with rubber cement (not glue) and press them together until everything dries.

A lot depends on where you place the switches and the surface preparation. I wiped each surface with rubbing alcohol, put the strips on and let everything dry for 24 hours before I mounted them on the Tridion and the door panels. Keep an eye out to make sure that, over time, the magnet trigger part doesn’t fall off the door panel. It is heavier than the reed switch and it takes a lot of shock when the door closes. If it does fall off, the light will stay on until the batteries go dead. By the way, if you do lose the magnet switch, you can substitute a regular flat magnet (Radio Shack, etc). You just have to be careful to space the magnet properly.

Spend some time trying different locations for the switches. I used blue tape and a continuity tester attached to the terminals of the reed switch to try out different locations for the switches. At some point you are bound to find several locations where the magnet gets close enough when the door is closed to trigger the switch, but not so close that it causes interference with the closure of the door.

The photo below shows the switch for the passenger side Tridion. The red arrow points to the silver reed switch. The blue arrow points to the 3M pad on the metal Tridion.

CLICK ANY PICTURE TO ENLARGE

In the photo below, the red arrow points to the reed switch that was just installed (photo above), on the silver Tridion. The green arrow points to the black painted magnet. The yellow arrow points to the 3M mounting pad on the plastic door liner.

CLICK ANY PICTURE TO ENLARGE

An important word of caution: I know you are an adult and you wouldn’t do anything unsafe on purpose. But do be cautious, especially on the driver’s side, when you are placing the light and routing the wires. The last thing in the world you want is a light or a wire to dangle down and get caught or tangled in the brake or accelerator pedal. Especially if you’ve just gone around a corner fast enough to turn your ESP warning light on.

Well, that’s about it. I haven’t been able to get any really good pictures of the lights turned on in the dark, but I think the results are pretty (as in reasonably) good. The lights come on when the door opens and they go off when the door closes. The lights can be turned off completely by reaching under the dash and tapping on the light. Tap again and it returns to the "open door/light on" function.

So, for a little over $27, plus a few bucks for 3M picture hangers and other bits and bobs, I got my foot-well lights.

I could have kept the cost down by installing only one reed switch, on the driver’s side, and just run the supplied wire from the passenger’s side over and connect it to the driver’s side supplied wire. The driver’s door switch would then control both lights. That probably would have kept the cost under $20.

If I could have figured out a way to noodle-up a couple of micro-switches, I know I could have kept the cost to $15 or so.

The whole project took most of the sunshine part of one day {not counting cure time for the pads), and I was never without the use of the car. I went slowly because I had no guidelines and everything was trial and error. Actually, most of my time was spent just fussing around trying out different switch locations and deciding how to attach everything.

I will agree that these LEDs are not as pretty or as sophisticated as the Brabus version, but I do have a functioning set of foot-well lights, and best of all, I have at least $500 that I can now spend on other goodies for the car. Good Luck.

FOOT- WELL LIGHT MODIFICATION

This is my new foot-well light set up.  It is tied in to the dome light and like the dome light, it comes on when you open the door, and it fades off after you close the door.

click to enlarge  This is the LED strip I bought from Oznium.com .  The LED's come in many different lengths and several different colors.  The great thing about this company is that the cost is reasonable and the company is in the U.S., so shipping only took a couple of days.  I chose a 6 inch strip of "warm white" for about $7.00 instead of the regular brilliant white LED. 

click to enlarge  To get the foot-well LED to light correctly I tapped into the "switched earth" wire to the overhead light (Brown/Blue).  Because the LED pulled so little power I just used some healthy speaker wire from the switch down the passenger side pillar and over to the LED.  In this photo the red arrows point to where I drilled into the switch and screwed in the speaker wires.  The yellow arrow points to the factory wires to the light:  Red/Blue=Permanent Power.../...Brown/Blue=Switched Ground.../... Brown=Constant Ground

click to enlarge  I zip-tied the LED strip to a small strip of thin aluminum that I bent to match the bulge under the center of the dash.  The aluminum strip was attached to that area using two small screws that screwed into  a couple of holes already drilled by the factory.  The "hot" wire was routed from the "switch" side of the overhead light, down the passenger side pillar and over to the LED.  The wire at the overhead switch is colored Brown/Blue.

REAR HATCH (TRUNK) LIGHT MODIFICATION

I also set up a rear hatch light system patterned after a couple of previous modifications done by others on the "SCOA" site and on the "smart USA insider" site.  I appreciate their work and I will provide links to their work further down.

click to enlarge  In this photo you can see the four LED's and the wiring set up.  Notice that instead of putting all four of the lights along the back or along the front of the plastic headliner, I chose to "stagger" my lights, two in front and two in the back.  The blue arrows point to the LED's. 

The red arrow points to the switch I put in the front of the overhead plastic panel.  With this switch, I can turn the hatch lights on or off, either by reaching back from the front seat, or by reaching through the back hatch. 

The yellow arrow points to the pigtail connectors I used on the wires.  I drilled some of the holes for the wires through the stiffeners.  Other times I just cut a slit with a Dremel tool and stuck the wire in the slit.  These LED's are connected  to the "always hot" side of the overhead switch.  The color of that wire, at the switch, is Red/Black.

Click to enlarge  I grounded the LED's in the trunk area so I only needed to run one hot wire (red) from the overhead light-switch area.

Click to enlarge  I made the wire to the connectors long enough so that if I needed to take the plastic cover back off for some reason, the length of the wires would allow me to lower the plastic overhead to the hatch security cover and take any strain off the wires.  As you reinstall the plastic overhead cover the extra wire can be folded up into a handy little cut out area in the Tridion.

The only bad thing about this modification was the long wait I had before I received the LED's from China.  It took about a month and a half for them to arrive in California, and then I had to go to the Post Office to sign for them.  A trip to my Post Office is about a 25 mile round trip.  After I found Oznium on the web I'm sure I could have found a substitute for these LED's, cheaper and closer to home.

The three sites you should visit are;

smart USA insider,  "Ultimate Smart Trunk Light DIY"  by Eric N, and,

SCOA "Trunk Light Mod - complete"    by gbryers, and,

Evilution U.K. "451 Boot Light" http://www.evilution.co.uk/175 .

Good Luck