Hey, i recently did this mod and couldnt be happier. I bought the kits at Fry's electronics in Renton Wa.....at night, when you open the trunk, its soo much nicer to have really bright white light. it really does look OEM. i've had a few people ask me question about it already. As stated before, be really careful when installing as if you reverse the polarity and connect the power up backwords, the inverter is friend instantly (HINT: do NOT assume that the red wire is always positive, this is how i blew my first inverter) i looked at some other options such as LED strips, flexible LED strips from underglow, other cold cathode tubes, but this little 14.99 kit does the trick perfectly without being "ricey."


also, i was concerned with mounting the tubes to the metal on the underside of the trunk deck, so i decided to mount them a little closer to the opening of the trunk, on the capreted plastic panels which are (if your standing by the trunk) closer to you than the torsion springs which hold the trunk open. i simply drilled 2 little holes and slid zip-ties through to hold them on.. that way they can move around (as the panels are thin and flexible) and absorbe some shock while still being mounted pretty solidly.

 

fyi- i just did this mod, it's quick, easy, and CHEAP! picked up my cathode light set and it looked EXACTLY like jeff's from ebay - cost was less than 7 bucks SHIPPED!

http://cgi.ebay.com/12-DUAL-WHITE-NE...QQcmdZViewItem

I didn't want to hack up my oem light housing so i popped it out, replaced it with the blue box which was wrapped with foam so it wouldn't rattle and then made some metal tabs that slipped into the oem plug for the power source.

All done!

 

well where's the pics ??

 

hey V8 Aristo, what was the cost of doing neons under your car?

 

I just bought a kit yesterday, but I am a complete complete electrical newb. It's obvious that the cold cathodes plug into the inverter, but what do you do with the male and female plug things? And what about the on off switch, do you mount that with the inverter as well? And what would I need to soder to the trunk light output? Sorry for all the questions, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here's a picture, just for reference. It looks exactly like the one that I got.

 

Here is what I did...

Prepping the kit. See the red and black wires coming from the blue box? Follow those wires until you get to the switch and the rest of the wiring harness and cut them so you have a good foot or what not of wire coming from the blue box.

Remove old light housing and housing cover. You should be left with a plug that provides power. If you look inside the plug coming from the car, you'll see that it used to fit over two metal tabs in the light housing. The goal now is to make metal tabs that are similar and to fit the tabs into the plug coming from the car.

Making the Tabs. I then crimped the red and black wires to 2 connectors similar to this one and then folded "U" in half to stick into the plug coming from the car. It now looks like this:

Plugging in the light. As the title says, plug in the red and black wires to the plug coming from the car. If you get the +/- mixed up, don't worry, you just won't see any light coming from your cathodes. If you get it right - then light aplenty.

Hiding the blue box Now you have to be like Rush Limbaugh and hide the little blue box for your little blue pills. What I did was wrap the blue box with some foam strips and wrap it with electrical tape to ensure it didn't rattle around. After ensuring it wouldn't rattle around, I stuffed it into the hole where the light housing used to be and made sure it didn't fall out. Yeah, this may look totally ghetto and may not be the BEST way to wire this up but I didn't want to hack up my original light housing to make it look "nice". After all - it's the underside of the rear deck we're talking about here.

Securing the cathodes. In Arizona, it's hot. REAL HOT. With the temps hitting 120 degrees easily in a trunk, there was no way my double sided tape was going to hold up in the heat. So I used tar-based sound dampening material to "tape" the tips of the cathodes to the underside of the rear deck. Again, not the best looking way to set it up if you only have 4 strips of this stuff holding up your lights but when your whole trunk is covered with this stuff - it quickly looks like a space shuttle compartment and it doesn't look that bad.

 

so the switch and the the other two connectors are useless and i can throw them away?

 

yes.

or - you can incorporate them and make your install look A LOT MORE COMPLICATED AND IMPRESSIVE TO YOUR GIRLFRIEND.

jk

 

so guys your just getting power from the stock light correct ?? so when the trunk is opened the light come on like stock ?? also how do you guys think blue would look ?? i gotta do this mod

 

yep- power comes from stock light.

and trunk opens = light on. trunk closed = light off.

 

thanks i just went to comp usa and best buy i guess its fleabay for me i think iam going to get 1 extra convertor in case i fry the first one

 

ebay actually has the best deals on this stuff. with shipping it's like 8 or 9 bucks.

i bought a set of the blue ones too and was thinking about having them mounted under the front seats but i don't have heated seats otherwise it would have been easy. they're now just sitting around the garage. post some pics when you're all done with yours if you do anything other than just trunk lights.

 

lol ok

 

I got home last night and hooked one of the lights in, but I didn't have enough wire for the other light so I gotta go buy some tonight. The first one looks great so far. Thanks for the help guys.

 

one more thing I forgot to mention is to make sure your lights are lined up properly so the shadow that is cast onto the ground or wherever is straight. or at least symmetrical.

i know - small detail but hey- it's a visible thing that WILL get noticed since these lights are so bright.