by southpawboston

I keep all sorts of small stuff like parking slips, gas receipts, etc. in the coin bin to the left of the steering column, and have a hard time sifting through it when it's dark. This DIY adds a 5mm LED to the coin bin to provide illumination whenever the parking lights are on. A small LED provides just enough light to see what's inside, and draws negligible current.

Materials and tools needed:

·      12V LED. I recommend Radio Shack. They have them in different colors for about $2.00 and up

·      electrical tape

·      solder

·      solder gun

·      wire strippers

·      phillips head screwdriver

·      10mm socket/socket drive

·      drill with bits

The Project:

(Total cost: under $5.00  Difficulty: easy) 

1)   Disconnect the battery.

2)   Remove lower crash pad panel. The figure shows the steering wheel removed; you do not have to do this.

3)   Drill a hole in the crash pad panel large enough to fit the LED snugly. Make sure to position the hole where the LED will shine into the coin bin when open.

4)   Splice the LED leads into the dimmer switch. You can remove the harness connector at the back of the dimmer switch by reaching in behind the panels that you removed. The harness has three wires:  two black, one green.

5)   One black wire is positive and one is negative, as indicated in the illustration. Splice the LED leads into the two black wires. Solder and tape the splice junctions.

6)   Plug the harness back into the dimmer switch, and reassemble the crash pad panel and side panel.