I have been itching to do some LED work on my car and the easiest place to start was the map reading lights. I took apart the panel up by the rear view mirror and took a look inside. I was surprised to see a few SMT LED's with lenses, I was expecting 10mm dome shaped LED's.

I busted out my arsenal of electrical mishap and got to action...


















vanity lights FTW if I need more output...




I was satisfied with the results for the time being, but decided to tweak it bit more.... I ordered some half watt LED's from digikey to put in the map lights (they'd be about 15 times brighter than the current setup I have with the standard red LED's)... and I might end up swapping the flood/door lights as well ... leaving only the vanity lights white.... I think it looks cool...


thoughts?


As far as function goes... RED light is harder to see by the human eye because it's near the infrared end of the light spectrum. When you have your map lights on at night, it will be harder for people to see whats going on inside with RED LED's than it is with the original white ones.