Add LED Cargo Lighting

I have an 06'. As many of you 5'ers know, the cargo area lighting is down right whimpy, pathetic, crappy.... yadda yadda yadda.(dark)

Here's the solution. As I told another member here; I wanted useful light, not going for the bling thing. I also wanted it to be as inconspicuous as possible.
There are other LED strips out there, so it's your call on which one you use.

All of you can do this relatively simple upgrade for about $40.00 (depending on the type of LED setup you buy)(eek2)

So here we go. Here's what you need.
-#2 phillips screwdriver.
-#2 or 3 slotted screwdriver.
- 10mm socket.
- A wire stripper tool.
- Hot glue gun (I prefer high temp).
- smallest slotted jewelers screwdriver (Like the ones at the dollar store).
- A good sharp knife or box cutter (very minimal use. Two 1/8" notches).
- 4 ft of 22AWG or 20AWG speaker wire. (I used 22AWG for this project).
- 2 sets of 18-22AWG Male & Female insulated connectors (The red ones).
- Regular Isopropyl alcohol.
- A few Q-tips.
- a very small piece of course sand paper. 2"x2" will do.
- Your LED strips (or strip). I used 2 "PILOT CZ-3008W PHANTOM LED
STRIP" from Auto Zone. I have seen these at Pep Boys also. They are
12" White Light and very low profile.
- Some good jams!
- Some beef jerky!

If you have a small narrow set of needle nose pliers, that will help also during the 1 step they could be used.

Now on to the disassembly and prep!

1 - At the very rear of the cargo area, up top, remove the crossover fascia piece. Be sure to grab from the front and back. start at one side or the other (it doesn't matter) and pull it straight down. It has 6 connection points along it's width. Go ahead and mark which way is front and which way is back (on the inside). This will save you a lot of time later, especially if your not used to disassembly.

Panels removal and seperation

1 - Take the tray out

2 - Remove the pop-outs/pull-outs holding the plastic piece across the bottom
seal.

3 - Remove the tie down with a 10mm socket.

4 - Remove the phillips head screw on the right panel.

5 - On the upper pillar fascia, remove the pop-outs/pull-outs from the top.

6 - In the right rear window, remove the pop-outs/pull-outs from the top.

7 - Now take the slotted screwdriver and pop that measly little light out of the
panel, from the front of the light.

Panels removal and seperation 2

Continued.(lurk)

Panels removal and seperation 3

Still continued(lurk).

After you have seperated the panel and pillar from the back edge, go ahead and feed your wire through.

I am showing it here with my wires attached at the bottom already. The next post will show how it is attached to the switch.

Switch connection.

One thing to remember about LED's, is that they are only powered ONE WAY. (detect)It's not like the regular incandescent bulbs that can have the wires switched and as long as ones on "+" and the other on "-" it works. I'll show a couple of posts with this because it's the only way the switch will actuate both the LED's and the regular light at the same time. If you have them in reverse at the switch, you'll get an annoying result.

**** VERY IMPORTANT*** TWIST YOUR WIRE ENDS AFTER YOU STRIP THEM!
ALSO, DO NOT ATTACH THE WIRES ONLY TO THE WIRE HARNESS OR THE TWO WIRES THAT GO INTO THE WIRE HARNESS. THIS WILL SIMPLY KEEP YOUR LED'S ON ALL THE TIME!

View 1 shows the back of the switch with the White Harness Connector
(WHC) attached.

View 2 Shows the WHC slightly slid off of the two small blades it attaches to.
As you can see, I have a wire going into the hole of the bottom insert
on the harness. It is where the lower (or silverish) blade is going into
the harness.

View 3 Shows the wire inserted much clearer, into the harness.

After you insert the wire into the harness, then you simply slide the harness back on, with the wire in there, and it creates a compression connection, just as good as crimping.

Now for the other wire.

Views 1,3,4 & 5 Show the other wire going under the side piece of copper (on the switch) and then up and over the upper piece of copper. Be sure and strip about 1& 1/4" for this

(This is where the Needle-nose pliers and very small slotted jewelers screwdriver come in.) Be sure to wrap the body of these two with even simple scotch tape. This will keep you from shorting out the two poles. Don't worry though. The light will come on if you do. I did this like 20 times and never blew the fuse.

On this part of the switch, you will see that the entire copper throw, here, is somewhat stuck in a piece of plastic. There is some space there between the plastic and the copper throw. I routed the wire around the copper throw and then shoved the wire into that itty-bitty space, with the small slotted jewelers screwdriver, and came back around and tied the wire with the Needle-nose pliers.

Congrats, you have just accomplished the hardest part of the whole exercise. Some might want to use solder here, but if you don't have that or know how, this will work just as well.

I'm sure someone will come up with a better way of connecting that wire, but it'll work for now and for as long as I've been using it.

Switch connection 2

As you can see here, I have the top of the switch with the small slotted jewelers screwdriver there. It is in the spot where you will be pushing the wire into that space.

If all is right then here is what happens after all wires are connected.


Do not pop the light switch back in yet.

Now it's off to the crossover piece and fitting the LED's on it.

Crossover piece prep & LED mounting

Sandpaper, alcohol, Q-tips & your cutting utensil needed now.

Cutting to be done as per the LED's you buy.


1 - On the front edge of the crossover piece, where the LED's will be, take the sandpaper (60 grit does nicely) and rough up the surface. Your only roughing up about 3/16" wide of surface, and you don't need to sand down much. (hear ya)The surface is too slick and if you have ever used Armor-all or something, your LED's won't stick right.(hear ya)

So Sand that small bit of surface and then make sure to clean it a few times with the alcohol and Q-tips.

2 - Pick your position on the upper front edge of the cross-over piece. Because my LED's had a bit of a direction to them, I mounted them with the pass through at the center and right.
(hear ya)CUT THE NOTCHES AT AN ANGLE(hear ya)!!! LED strips are not meant to be folded at direct 90 degree angles. 0 - 60 degree angles are your range typically.

Connecting wires up top.

After you have cut your notches and attached the LED's to the crossover piece, It's time to Hot Glue the Pass through points of the LED's. Pretty basic and simple. The Pics show it all. Now hurry up and wait for the Glue to cool down.

After the LED's are in place now; be sure your wire strands get twisted first, the white and black leads.

(five-0)(flame)***** Don't crimp anything yet*****(flame)

You should have your stripped LED wires and your stripped power wires (the speaker wire).

Test which one is lighting your LED's. The light on the regular Cargo light should be on at the same time.

As you can see from what I did; I just made use of something right there. I used a white twist-tie to show my wire to attach to the white wire from the LED's.

Crimping

This may be overkill for some, but I wanted to make the instructions for the novice.

Before crimping anything; test your lights all on for one last time, with your current wiring.

Use a Male and Female crimp connector on each side of the wiring:
- A Male and Female for the LED side.
- A Male and Female for the power side.

This will make sure that you don't cross them, should you ever need to unhook them.


Now that everything is connected, remember to Cable Tie your wires by the switch.

Reassembling

(band2) Views 1 & 2
Go ahead and put the pillar top pull-out/pop-out back in first. You don't need to put it all back together just yet. This will save you from having to remove the crossover piece later.

(band2) Views 3 & 4
When putting your crossover piece back up; Start from the right side first. This way you'll be sure not to pinch your power wires. As you can see, it's just lining the insertion points up and popping the crossover piece in.

Keep testing the switch after panels or parts are attached to make sure the LED's and Light are going on together. This way if there's a problem you'll know that it happened with the last panel/part you attached.(bowdown).

I left the actual switch as the LAST THING I put back in. I wanted to make sure that everything else was OK on the reassembly first.

(headbang)(friday)Let me know if you need any more instructions.(friday)(headbang)

Great write up! Thanks for sharing!

Any way you can do a before and after nightime shot? I'm curious as to what kind of output these things do. I'm not sure I'd install a whole LED strip, but a couple 2 or 4 in some surface mount holders may be doable.

Night pics of LED on/off

A couple of the back

First one: All lights out

Second, Third & Forth are with the LED and Standard cargo light on.

Fifth is what you see with the flash of the camera on.

As seen in middle row.

The first pic is the 2nd row seats with their overhead light on only.

The next pic (Sorry it came out blurry) is with the 2nd row overhead light AND the rear LED lights on.

I put the camera on Night Shots, but it still didn't pick up enough light to do this justice.(headbang)

(2thumbs) I was, and still am, quite surprised by how much light you actually see at night from these lights.(2thumbs)

For $30.00 worth of lights (plus tax of course) I think I made out quite well.(yippy)

Thanks for the DIY. Hopefully I'll get around to doing this soon.

Very complete writeup.

m.