Upgrades 34. Interior Lighting

This is another one of those mods which people often laugh at, however I was just getting fed up of not being able to see anything when getting in and out of the car at night. I started off by having a torch nearby, but it just got really annoying having to get it our and shine it in every corner to finds stuff, and even to just get belted up.

In the end I decided I'd fit some LED light strips to sort this issue. I opted to buy some "LED Footwell" lights, of which there are 4 separate strips, designed to go in a bigger car. This meant I could run 2 strips down the tunnel and into the boot, so I could also have a light in the boot. I wanted these to be a permanent fixture in the car and not something that just plugs into the 12V socket (as that is already used for my USB ports).

I bought these Car Interior Footwell LED Strip Lights RGB from ebay. I chose the cigarette lighter power source, which I will adapt and wire into the fuse board. I also chose the 48 LEDs option (so that's 12 on each strip) which meant each strip was only 22.5 cm long, perfect to mount where I wanted to mount them. I also chose the app and remote control, I won't ever really need to use this as once it is setup, the LED's remember the last setting used but it did give me the option to mess about with them once installed.

the other component to buy is a Fuse Tap which allows you to extend a fuse in your fuse board, the Caterham runs standard fuse sizes, and for the lights you will need a 5A fuse, this will be used to hard wire in the lights.

I also wanted to be able to turn these on and off using a switch, so I ordered another 620 style toggle switch (the same type I used for the water/oil temp mod). I'm still not brave enough to drill the dash but I have a nice area hidden under the knee trim in the drive footwell which is easily accessible when driving, which is where I will mount it.

First I checked that the lights all worked, and that when I pulled the plug out and put it back in again, that they reverted to the last settings that I set up. Obviously if they reverted back to a "default" colour" each time I toggled them on then that would not be ideal. This then verified that if I put a switch in the loop that I could use it to just turn the lights on and off as I wanted them to be shown. Once I was happy, I decided to get to work on the wiring.

It was a simple case of cutting the cigarette lighter adapter off and wiring the positive wire to the switch, then the switch to the fuse tap (I used a crimp connector and also soldered the wire to the cigarette wire as the wire was very thin). I wired the negative part to a spade connector, knowing that I have about 5 spare negative spade connections ready to use in the loom which I setup a while ago. You should be able to see the general setup below. I also tidied it all up with some heat shrinks to make a nice neat job.

I chose to install the fuse tap on the bottom fuse in the fuse board, this was also a 5A fuse already, so it didn't matter which order I put the fuses in the fuse tap as they were both 5A. I then checked the lights all worked with this modification in place before securing the wiring to the existing loom under the dash (N.B. to work with the wiring behind the dash, simply take out the gauge dials and you can see what you are doing much easier!)

Once confirmed that it all worked still, I then ran 2 of the LED strips through the tunnel into the boot (2 had longer wires for this), this involves: Jacking the car up, removing the rear right wheel, loosening the handbrake cable, moving the seats forward (I have runners on both of mine now, before this, I had to remove the passenger seat!), removing the gear knob, then finally lifting up the tunnel top to gain access. Fitting back is of course just the reverse of this.

The main power box for the LED lights seemed to locate perfectly with the main group of wires that exits the tunnel at the front of the bulkhead.

Once I was happy with the boot install I put it all back together again and set to work on mounting the front LED strips. I tested these a few locations in the dark before committing to a vertical install position either side of the heater. This seemed to give the best light in the cabin and meant I could see the seat belts easily in the dark.

Install location and switch location shown below.

Here is how it looks in the dark with the lights on, a much better alternative to using a torch!

The final result in the cabin when the lights are on is great and looking for things in the boot at night is also rather easy now.