As you all know the rear seats can be pretty dark in the cabrio, and thanks to Imagox for sparking my interest in installing LED's (did the front and rear foot well, door puddle lights, and the boot) I decided to find a way to light up the rear seats.

Well last weekend I decided to tackle the project and after 3 hours Im pretty satisfied with the result. I used 2 white prewired superflux LED's from Onzium and mounted them in the plastic bow cover thats right above the rear seats. I routed the wiring to follow the existing harness that powers the sunroof motor. I also soldiered a connector inline to ease in removal if needed and they are powered through the regular dome lamp circuit so their fuse protected and operate the same as all the other lights.

I've attached some pictures of the final result (dont know how to insert them in threads). The lights have a slight blue hue to them so they match rather well.

p.s. mods fell free to move if needed

 

Awesome! That is truly the most ideal location for cabrio rear lighting. How did you route the wiring in the roof itself?

 

That IS really, really nice. Beats my stick-on LED light up there...

Nice work!

 

Thank you, Thank you.

The factory wiring harness follows the drivers side of the top skeleton, so I just zip-tied my harness along the factory harness. I got the power from the drivers footwell light and just ran the wire along the sill then behind the rear quarter panel trim to my connector that sits on the inner fender, basically inside right above the fuel door.

I took plenty of pictures during the install, so if anyone wants to try this i can write up a how-to to help ya out.

 

Installation pictures are always appreciated!

I meant routing wires for the cloth roof. Trying to understand how to keep wires getting mangled from the folding roof. Did it go inside between the cloth layers, or on the interor?

 

I'll attach some pictures when I can get a chance. My home computer is broken, so I'll have to do it at work but my harness is between the cloth trim panel and the outer top material. If you open the top about 1/4 to half way the inner cloth trim piece will loose some of its tension and you can see how the factory harness is routed.

 

Heres a copy of the how-to. I tried using gmail doc's presentation. Let me know if it sux and I'll change it to something else.

http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dfv7p7bw_32d2tzg&fs=true

 

Dude,

Darn, Can't view the presentation on my Mac.
Any possibilty of posting it in another format?

 

You did some good research into how to run the wiring. I just might do this. I already have lighting wires going to the rear speaker area. I installed rear reading lights (writeup here) but lighting from overhead would be a nice addition. The Oznium thin LED strips may work well for this application.

Is there a way to print out the entire presentation from Google Docs? My only criticism is for those places where the description and picture are on different pages, and you can't look at them at the same time. Otherwise, it's an excellent writeup and very complete.

 

I'll set it up in a word format so you can save it and print it if needed, subiedriver let me know if that will work, not much experience with mac's.

It would be pretty easy for you rkw, just splice into the wires for your rear lights.

You could use the this strips for this, theres plenty of room, but they might be pretty bright for the back seat. I've never seen them in person but in the video on that page they seem pretty bright.

 

Word Doc would be awesome.

I gotta say that I've never been big on appearance mods, but the functionality of the overhead and reading lights is great and you should be praised for the elegance of your solution. I've got a 10 yr old daughter (who has come to realize that Fish is probably the car she'll learn to drive on) who loves to read on trips and I think she'll be quite happy.

 

currently my lights only work with the dome lamp but I used a 4 pin connector so i can easily add in a constant power and switch so that they can be turned on without having to turn on the dome light.

 

Heres the new how-to. hope a .pdf file will work for ya.