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Like many here, I owned a 2IS at one point, and was very surprised to see that our newer cars do not have ambient footwell lighting. I really enjoyed this feature on my 2IS, so I needed it on my 3IS, however the problem is that most owners on this forum seem to be 16 years old, and want the brightest flashiest "look at me" LED's that money can buy, whereas I just want the dim and "ambient" footwell lighting like Lexus provides stock on most models.
The hardest part of this whole project was finding the right LED to use. Searching for a "dim LED", is literally quite opposite of what anyone searches for, making it almost impossible to find, and many do not even list their lumens, or if they do they are not realistic. Anyways, I was able to find a 12V led with light output pretty much identical to the OEM Lexus setup, and that was the only hard part of the whole project.
I did not take pics of every step, but this is fairly straight forward. Remove the kickpanel underneath the driver and passenger side. Drill a hole for the LED towards the middle front, and in an area that does not interfere with anything above it when the kickpanel is installed. Install the LED's in the drilled holes, and then wire them by finding a fuse that turns on with your ignition (I used the heated seats fuse), insert your fused power lead there, wire the ground (I used the bolt holding the fuse box), and wallah. OEM style Lexus ambient footwell lights that turn on with your ignition.
These pics were taken in a complete dark garage with only interior lights on. Pics are hard to demonstrate brightness with, so I tried to make sure the stock ambient lights are in the pics for comparison, and also my feet, so you can hopefully see the lighting levels that these LED's provide.
Eventually I plan to use the 3rd LED in this pack for the center console, it puts out the perfect amount of light.
I was thinking....
what if I ran this up to the overhead console and created ambient lighting like they had before....
I'm not sure if it would work well with these, as that overhead ambient light in the 2is seemed to be very focused, but it might, now you got me thinking too lol.
I'm not sure if it would work well with these, as that overhead ambient light in the 2is seemed to be very focused, but it might, now you got me thinking too lol.
03-15-19, 11:04 PM
DIY OEM style footwell ambient lighting
