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DIY LED Puddle Lights

6K views 3 replies 3 participants last post by  Jnunez10 
#1 ·
So here is a description on a Puddle Light Mod I did. I apologize that I didn't think to take pics along this whole process to share with everyone but I did my best to describe it. Feel free to ask questions and I will take photos and answer questions you might have!

I pretty much used a flexible 4 inch led strip from my local auto store they are sold in a pair for 15 bucks. Blue Vehicle Car Sky Automotive exterior
Automotive design Vehicle Car Light Automotive lighting
Black Light Sky Darkness Lighting
To do the install you need to remove the following pieces.. mirror (not the housing just the glass), the small trim piece under where the mirror pivots, door panel, kick panel, and the panel that is located on the right side of the dash closest to the door. You will also need to pull off half the door gasket as it holds some of the trim pieces against the body. Once you have this all done it's time to run the wire. If you look at the bottom of the mirror there is a tiny gap underneath that if you pull apart a bit you can snake the small wire through. You will also want to attach your light to the mirror. Mine had some adhesive so I just cleaned the surface and stuck it on. After that you want to follow the path of the mirror wires. You can go straight down the small metal circle at the pivot point easily but after that you need to get it into the inner part of the door. There is a good amount of wire for the mirror connector so I pulled it out of the circle a bit and used it as a pull wire and taped my light wire on it to fish through. Now my light wire was not long enough so at this point I soldered a longer wire on and heat shrinked it. If you look there is a main section where all the wires converge and go through the rubber tube into the car. It can be removed with a star bit and you will need to remove all the electrical tape around it (re-tape it once your done) since you will need to run your wire along the same path as the other wires. Also the plastic piece that the wires run into comes apart just use a flat had screwdriver to do it or pop it open. The other end of that tube is a plastic piece that pops into the frame with the rubber seal that you will need to peak back. Use a a flat head at the top of each side to push the snaps in so you can get it out. Now that you have some flexibility you can run your wire through the rubber tube with out it catching and once you get to the end with the plastic piece there is holes in each corner so you can just snake your wire through one. The center of the plastic piece will be a wire connector from the door wires but you can work around it. Now that you are through all that, I used a stiff wire like a flexible piano wire to snake through to get in between the frame and the hole and into the interior of the car. There is only one way in so its better to go in from the footwell and see where the wire bundle comes in. Take your piano wire and run it along the wire going out and put your other hand in the hole in the door jam until you can grab the wire and pull it through. You can then tape you light wire to this and use it to pull it back down into the interior of the car. Ok now that you have reached the promised land all you need to do is get some quick connectors and tap off the interior lights in the footwell. There is one on each side. When you unlock the car the interior lights go on and same with your new puddle lights. When you hit the lock button or get in the car and close the door they dim in the same fashion as the interior lights. The only time they would go on is if you clicked your interior lights all the way up turning on all interior lights. After you have everyone thing working you just have to put it back together. The first side took me honestly 1.5 hours because I kind of knew my way around taking the door off but I did not know all the other ways to run the wire or how to go about it. After doing that side, the second side took me about 45 min start to finish since I knew what I was doing.


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