Car Wiring - Adding lights

[Bondonutz]

Not saying this how you "should" do it but it worked for me.

I installed several LEDs in my Jeep and just tapped into the existing 2 wires for the interior lights, the ones under the dash. No fuss no muss, had'em done in mere minutes.

I also found LED's on Ebay that had the same socket as the factory bulbs which made it super easy for doing the interior door lights and dome lights.

This is a example
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Xenon-White-...7b7abb&vxp=mtr

[rawfuls]

Originally Posted by nativepaul

As far as I am aware the space shuttles never had blue LED striplighting, thus no amount of blue LED striplighting is going to make a Kia Sportage look like a space shuttle.

If I wanted to do it (which I dont), I would tap into a pre-switched supply like the dome light and boot/trunk light, rather than the cigerette lighter for power supply and fuse box to switch it, the lights you linked are 400mA each so one under each seat and one under the glovebox is 2amps extra, which I would have thought would be OK but i have no idea what size wiring Kia use, you need to check that out, if in doubt, you might want to switch the existing incandescent bulb with an LED replacement which will lower the current.

Whichever way you do it, Unless you want bare wires all over the car you will have to remove some trim, whether is is centre console, carpet, rear seats, rear plastics to run from the fuse box in your footwell to the seat and trunk. Or headlining, B pillar plastics, carpet, to utilise the dome light. Depending on how and where you want to mount it you may not have to remove anything in the boot/trunk if you use the boot/trunk light for switched power as it is in there already.

Go away, you're ruining all the fun!
Just let me make this KIA as beautiful as possible.. which isn't much.
At least it's something!

In any case, removing trim is something I definitely will want to avoid.
I was hoping there'd be door lighting wiring going on under the front seats.. darn.

Originally Posted by bruce750i

I think they pull around 5 amps for every 5 meters.

You don't want them on while driving?

Power seat wiring is also a good place to tap a constant 12v.

Definitely not on while driving, would be a pretty decent distraction, maybe I could have them dim down if I really wanted to, but this is primarily for lighting things up at night.

Originally Posted by Bondonutz

Not saying this how you "should" do it but it worked for me.

I installed several LEDs in my Jeep and just tapped into the existing 2 wires for the interior lights, the ones under the dash. No fuss no muss, had'em done in mere minutes.

I also found LED's on Ebay that had the same socket as the factory bulbs which made it super easy for doing the interior door lights and dome lights.

This is a example
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Xenon-White-...7b7abb&vxp=mtr

The tricky thing about my situation is that I'm trying to install floor lights, as opposed to standard lighting around the dash/ceiling, where 12V supplies are easy to access..
Tapping into the domelight would require removing the headliner, and side trims to run the wire from domelight down the pillars and into the front seat floor area.
The dash might be a lot easier to do for the front floor lights, but there's not many lights/accessories down there that come on during the door lights...

Fuses would only provide one type of 12V (either + or -), so tapping into fuse would probably be a bad idea...