I've found that I need a light or two for the engine bay quite frequently (i.e. car meets at night, minor maintenance at night after it cools off since it's Florida, etc.), the only problem is obviously, there's no light underneath the bonnet. I tried doing a few searches but the terms are all too general to get anything useful. Has anyone else put lights on the underside of their bonnet? I was thinking maybe hooking up a small LED strip somewhere near the back, and a pressure button so it only comes on when I need it to. I was hoping others had similar needs and experiences and came up with some inventive ways. Thanks for any help!

 

Send ImagoX a pm. He has a light in just about every part of his car. He has a few under the bonnet as well.

 

work inside in your garage, and turn on your headlights. they bounce off the ceiling and light up the whole bay like fluorescent overheads!

 

This is more of a bling mod but... The lights i have in my scoop also do a pretty good job of lighting my engine bay when the bonnet is up.

Here is a picture, i need to move the LED's back because as it is now they reflect right off the body and make it look like a bunch of dots instead of a glow.

 

Heh, vaguely Knight Riderish. How did you mount the lights exactly, and which 12V source did you hook up to?

 

Night Rider, way before my time!

I got the LED's from www.oznium.com and i use on of there waterproof LED strips (http://www.oznium.com/waterproof-led-ribbon).

The strip is very thin, so i was able to screw it onto the the black piece of plastic that is attached to the bonnet right behind where the opening for the scoop is. The strip comes with these little plastic brackets that allows you to mount them real easily.

That website sells a ton of different types of LED's. I went with those thin waterproof one because of where they were going to be located. Luckily for you, because you are only really trying to light the engine compartment it opens up a lot of other options.

I decided to draw power from the cigarette lighter, it turns on and off with the ignition so i dont have to worry about draining my battery. Of course, because i dont always want them on i also stuck a switch in line with it. The nice part is, because they are LED's they dont draw much power, so you can draw from any place where in makes sense.

You might want to try one of these out.
http://www.oznium.com/high-intensity-led-floodlight

They sure sound good.