Interior Lighting

[JenJen]

Hey all
brand new to this so bear with me if my posts turn out a little funny   I am thinking about getting some purple LED/neon lights for my car, to be fitted in the driver and passanger footwells.. chavvy i know but i just want a subtle glow to brighten up the inside. Trouble is...i have no idea how to do this! I don't particularly want to buy the ones that plug directly into the cigarette lighter because i don't want wires trailing everywhere or my cigarette plug to be permanently occupied.  My friend has ones which he had wired into his car's electrics somewhere behind the radio, albeit not in a Mazda. Does anybody know how to do this or has some of their own? And would doing this invalidate my warranty? Its just because its a new car and the last thing I want to do is fiddle around with it and do any damage  


Thanks guys

[angelos]

Welcome to the forums first!! If you could post some picturrs of your car to our gallery!!
Now about the neons I don't know how you can wire them alone but taking one (with the cigarette plug) at a car electrician can connect it directly to the battery (with some mods-DON'T try this alone), and he can add a swith in the cabin to manuall swith it on-off!!

[Nathan_MAZDA2]

idealy you want to wire them to the automatic lights that come when you open the doors
i've done it on a mazda 323f but not looked at the 2 yet.

[evilfish5000]

Can i suggest wiring it from the ciggerette plug.

You can easily pull off the storage space around the ciggerette. You can then hardwire your led leads to the ciggerette plug make sure you find an earth point somewhere to prevent your electrics from blowing. The all you need to do negotiate the wiring under the carpet which is a little bit of a pain but still easily done with some patience.

I did a simerlar thing in hard wiring as i needed a 12v cig socket closer to the top of the dash and thats worked fine never had a problem. I can even plug two things in at once like the road angel and mobile phone charger.

[jb66]

Can i suggest wiring it from the ciggerette plug.

You can easily pull off the storage space around the ciggerette. You can then hardwire your led leads to the ciggerette plug make sure you find an earth point somewhere to prevent your electrics from blowing. The all you need to do negotiate the wiring under the carpet which is a little bit of a pain but still easily done with some patience.

I did a simerlar thing in hard wiring as i needed a 12v cig socket closer to the top of the dash and thats worked fine never had a problem. I can even plug two things in at once like the road angel and mobile phone charger.

Problem with that is that they'd be permanently on, it would be beter to hook it up to the same circut that controls the interior lights so they only come on when needed.

[Nathan_MAZDA2]

you could also hook them up to your side lights

[angelos]

Or to a photovoltaic system on your roof

[terryt]

I did this in my last car, but haven't bothered yet with the mazda 2 (yet). I bought some neons made for lighting PC cases, came with 2 cold cathode tubes and a dual output inverter. Just had to find the cable from the interior light and tapped the inverter input to the interior light cables at the fuse box under the dash. They came on with the roof interior light when you open the door etc.

[K-LEE]

as above i did the same to my bros clio under both footwells, wired them up to the cigerette socket wire and door contact switch so when doors opened they came on but also wired them to the cig socket with a switch and single fuse so you could switch on and off whilst driving.

k-lee.

[x-rayted]

there is a "Big List of accessories" topic in this forum.
http://www.mazda2forums.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=233.0

You can see "In car neons" there which composed of some footwell lights, some speaker lights and a neon over glovebox compartment. I liked them very much ..I think they are only available in Pacific markets and we dont have them over Europe.

If you can find them , inform us