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I've wanted some kick *** cockpit lighting since I got my ride, so I've been on a quest to make my interior Vette lighting at least as good as my Ford Explorer.
If you're not interested in a lighting mod for the interior, you can bail now, this mod isn't for you.
I found a company that makes led's that wire to a Bluetooth controller that is run by an app. It's really freaking cool, a LOT more so than it looks in these pictures. I've been finding that simple light upgrades have a lot of impact for not a lot of money comparatively speaking. I started with this mod:
I love it but wanted some ambient lighting when I was driving. I enjoy cruising some of the country roads around my place listening to the engine, gliding along the road with the insides glowing a little bit. The control lets you have two independent zones:
The app itself gives you tons of options. You control the zone colors and brightness, plus it's got features that I won't ever use while driving but my kids got a big kick out of them, like breath for pulsing the lights, strobe, and you can load music into the app and it will control the lights for you to the music. It's also got a ton of preselected themes, and if you see a color you want, you can snap it with your camera and the lights will replicate it.
I've still got some tweaking to do, and I'm going to add some subtle lighting to the hatch area, but I'm a happy camper.
The install wasn't too bad. I tapped off fuse 37 in the back, ran a ground to the battery then up to the control under the drivers seat. It's got an on/off switch that is wired to the control a little awkwardly, otherwise the lights daisy chain. You just run the wires and mount them. I put lights in the footwells and I found you can put them behind the seats and get a nice 'floating' glow in that dead space. A half days work.
The company is xkglow dot com. I got the interior lighting kit for $115 with free shipping. I added a few extra lights which brought my total to about $155. A lot of bang for still not a lot of money!
Sweet!.. Did you eliminate the courtesy lights in the foot well? Are the led's totally controlled via a on/off switch and then the app independently of any door courtesy lighting?
Sweet!.. Did you eliminate the courtesy lights in the foot well? Are the led's totally controlled via a on/off switch and then the app independently of any door courtesy lighting?
I just left the blue LEDs I installed earlier in the footwells, or you could just leave the stock, they aren't related to what I did. Those are on the interior light switch so they shut off right after you shut the door.
Yes, the lights I added are completely independent so you can simply kill em if you don't want em on, for instance if you're at the track.
J/K, Tom! Looks great! Actually, my 2011 Mini Cooper S Has a simpler but similar feature built into it. You can change the color of all the indirect ambient lighting they have built into the car.
Haha, that's funny Ed! My Ford Explorer has it too, it was the missing piece for me in the interior of this car. I'm still researching stuff to do to the engine before I kill my warranty, so this has kept me busy and entertained!
How involved is the install? What components and where?
It really wasn't terribly difficult. This is the kit:
You just need wire for the ground and power, a mini fuse tap and I used a ring terminal for the ground. Placing the control was my biggest choice I guess.
The control has three leads coming out of it and one of them is for the power and on/off switch which I wanted near the drivers side. It would've been nice to put the switch in the center console, but I've already got the Vitesse in there so I decided to put it on the ground behind the drivers seat and run the switch up next to the seat:
I ended up pulling the hatch and carpet behind the seats to figure it out, but you could pretty easily do it without pulling it out. With the control there, I just ran the wires to the led's along the sides to the footwells.
Behind the seats (I still need to tidy it up) the lights need to face up and follow the angle of the back wall in order to be seen, so I just tacked them onto a 1x1 then used Velcro to stick it to the carpet.
After seeing your C5 project, I don't think you'll have any trouble figuring this one out. I will say that I am just a hack when it comes to this stuff, but anybody can do this mod, it's simply not that hard. I did have a glitch in that the first fuse tap I used was bad, which of course led to all of the usual mod grief of trying to figure out what I did wrong, when it turns out I didn't do anything wrong.
This was fun for me, I like the results and now my ride has killer ambient lighting, so win win win in my book!
The kit comes with four tubes, so you could do the footwells then wherever you want with the other two. When you add it to your cart, you can add options. I added two flexible tubes and the extra wiring kit for a total of $159.
The wiring kit was a little bit of overkill. I wanted two zones and a little bit of light in the hatch area with the extra lights, but you could just order a couple of splitters and maybe like two extra wires to accomplish two zones without having some stuff leftover like I did.
Last edited by Rooster OG; 03-30-2016 at 08:20 PM.
I've wanted some kick *** cockpit lighting since I got my ride, so I've been on a quest to make my interior Vette lighting at least as good as my Ford Explorer.
If you're not interested in a lighting mod for the interior, you can bail now, this mod isn't for you.
Rooster, it looks great & thanks for sharing it--I'd like to get that or something similar.
Last edited by Steve Garrett; 03-31-2016 at 12:07 AM.
03-29-2016, 11:44 PM
LED ambient cockpit lighting
