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DIY: Replacing my car's footwell lights with LED strips

22nd June 2021, 11:53 by Rahul Nagaraj

I’ve swapped the halogen bulbs in all the interior lights with LEDs. They consume very little electricity, say 20% of the original halogen bulbs, made the cabin much brighter than earlier.

BHPian saisailendra recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

In this thread, I shall write about how I tried to improvise the cabin lighting, specifically foot-well lights in my Vento 2017 model.

My Vento comes with the following lights from factory:

Front cabin light – 1 bulb – festoon type – 10 watts
Rear cabin lights – 2 bulbs – festoon type – 5 watts each
Front foot-well lights – 1 bulb each side – T10 - 5 watts each

That is pretty much it. And all the bulbs are halogen bulbs. These lights barely lighten up the cabin and the end-result is a gloomy, orange-yellow cabin.

What I have done earlier, pretty much within the first 6 months of ownership is and I’ve swapped the halogen bulbs in all the interior lights with LEDs. Went with good quality branded (Philips and Osram) LEDs. They consumed very little electricity, say 20% of the original halogen bulbs, made the cabin much brighter than earlier and changed the overall cabin lighting to a cooler colour temperature (6000K). I was satisfied then, seeing a good improvisation over the original lighting. But still, that light is nowhere close to being called “Bright” or even “Adequate”. So, the wish for a brighter cabin was always there, but that wish slowly calmed down and went dormant.

Now coming to the foot-well lights, I must thank a fellow T-BHPian viXit, for making my interest in LEDs and cabin lights come to life again after two and a half years of dormancy. His discussion regarding cabin lighting, LED strips acted as a stimulus for me taking up this DIY project.

I have no experience or expertise with soldering and engineering projects. So, I have my share of goof-ups and this is a project that I did by my own thought. So, please excuse the not-so-nice-looking final fixture and feel free to make your own modifications which you deem fit, if you choose to do such a project. I hope this write-up provides few ideas for similar projects to readers.

My Vento comes with two stock foot-well lights, both front, one left and one right. They come as an OEM fixture, which has a T10 socket.

My objectives & limitations:

Must be bright
Can’t splice stock wires
Power consumption must be ≤ stock
Must be able to undo/swap with OEM fixture in case of service or warranty claims

What tools I needed: