Interior lights (1 Viewer)

[Scota4570]

I could not resist doing another little thing. Because the OEM dome light is feeble I added a little more light. I used adhesive backed LED strip lighting. It encapsulates the LEDs in clear plastic for weather proofing. They come in kits on amazon and are very cheap. I also used the same for under cabinet lights in the kitchen. The original bullet plug to the original light was wired into the LED with a split pigtail. The current drain of the LEDs is tiny. The LED tucks neatly in the rim of the metal top base. It can be removed easily, no permanent modifications were made. I suppose if a guy were ambitious he could use a two position dome light switch. One for the OEM and one for the LED. It is invisible unless turned on. Realistically a foot of the LED strip would be enough.

 

[truckfighter]

I'm currently looking for some lights to shine down onto my instrument cluster and ran across this post - just wanted to say this looks fantastic.

 

[MOC]

I could not resist doing another little thing. Because the OEM dome light is feeble I added a little more light. I used adhesive backed LED strip lighting. It encapsulates the LEDs in clear plastic for weather proofing. They come in kits on amazon and are very cheap. I also used the same for under cabinet lights in the kitchen. The original bullet plug to the original light was wired into the LED with a split pigtail. The current drain of the LEDs is tiny. The LED tucks neatly in the rim of the metal top base. It can be removed easily, no permanent modifications were made. I suppose if a guy were ambitious he could use a two position dome light switch. One for the OEM and one for the LED. It is invisible unless turned on. Realistically a foot of the LED strip would be enough.

View attachment 3367124

I just wired my dome light into one of the 2 hot spots on the fuse box and was pretty happy until I saw what you did. Now I'm thinking my puny dome light sucks and I need rope lighting. Maybe the mood created by the rope light would convince my wife to ride in the 40 more often.

 

[Scota4570]

I was fussing with the interior lights. I added a second switch at the top left of the windshield to turn the LEDs on and off. It turns out that if if I turn on the LED when driving at night I can no longer see the road. Not so good.

IF I had planned better I would have pulled and extra wire. The old one for the old dome light and a new second one for the LEDs. I would have swapped the switch on the dash for a two position switch. I have a spare heater motor switch that would work perfectly. I could make new knob to resembles the OEM dome light switch. The knob threads are 10-32 or the metric one that is nearly the same as 10-32. With such a set up I could select the OEM dome light to find knobs on the dash at night and retain the bright light for when I am stopped.

Maybe someday but I am not interested in taking things apart to fold the windshield and allow me to pull the wire. Using the original wire to pull two new wires seems risky. Several here seemed to be interested in this so hopefully someone else will plan ahead accordingly.