For under 20$ you can improve the light quality in your van and cut down the discharge of your battery!
I am sure this has all happened to us once or twice, we go out to the car at night to try to find something and we turn on the dome lights or one of the map lights, the next morning we go back out to our van to start it up for work, and the battery is dead, that is when we realized that we left the dome lights on! :doh: ....
In my 97 Passenger Van, The dome lights turn on 6 #212-2 Bulbs
, one in each door well, and 1 in each dome light all the way back, these 6 bulbs can effectively drain the battery real quick.So I decided to see what switching over to LED would be like.
At first I just bought three 42 LED Panels from Yallstock on Ebay.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/320959455679?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
I bought 3 of them at 2.74$ each with free shipping, when I got them I went to install them and decided I needed 2 up front to balance out the light up front so they weren't just sitting directly in the middle or off to one side... So I soldered two wires together and stuck two up front and one in the middle row dome light.
The difference in the amount of light vs the stock bulbs was amazing, not only were they brighter but provided a cleaner white light than the golden hue of the dim stock bulbs...
But than I was thinking, okay now I need to order another 48 panel for the rear dome light above the hatch, because I had only bought 3 originally I knew I needed one more, and I said well I still have the door wells to deal with, what is the point of only going half LED if the door-well lights are still going to run down the battery. So I said what the hey and figured I would buy 4 more of the larger panels, I kind of wanted to see what 4 48LED panels would look like up front because I knew they would fit by test fitting two side by side up front....
So I ordered 4 more panels and some LED's for the door-wells also, I wanted the biggest bulb I knew I could fit in there so I ordered 4(as they were marketed as 2x) 42mm 16 LED panels and were 1.80$ for two plus 0.99$ for shipping(yea I could have probably got them cheaper but I was happy with the first shipment I got from yallstock) http://www.ebay.com/itm/400365160801?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
Once I got the new shipment in I stuck all the 16 led panels in the door-wells and one in the back dome-light as the spot is not ready to accept a 48 led panel, yet... There are two plastic posts in there that look like they really do nothing so I am going to cut those out and than probably stick two more 48 led panels back there.
That night I decided to leave my dome lights on over night, turned off the van, and then turned it back on for one minute right before engine start so I could look at the battery gauge, in the morning (about 12 hours later) I turned the van back on for a minute to check the battery gauge before I started it and it didn't even look like it moved over night!
So I knew the LEDs would not be killing my battery any time soon.
I was so happy with the LED's I also decided to convert the map lights over as well, and purchased some more bulbs for those.
I ordered 10 wedge bulbs for 4.99$ with free shipping from yallstock.
10 PCS T10 W5W 194 168 501 Car White 8 LED Light Bulb Lamp 3020 SMD Wedge Side
http://www.ebay.com/itm/400718384771?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
I knew these bulbs were going to need a little modification to fit in to the stock map light projector housings, but figured I had 10 to experiment with...
These I had to trim the outer lip off of the led housing to make them fit, I used a toe nail clipper as it seemed to be the safest way to do it, as opposed to using a knife or sanding the plastic away.
Now time for some pictures.
Front dome:
I scuffed up the metal pads on the ends of the springs with sand paper so the solder would stick to it, and made the 4 way wiring harness.
Installed
On
Covered
Middle Dome:
Installed
On
Covered
Rear dome(still have yet to put a 48LED panel as I am waiting for my third shipment
)You can see the bulb I have in there now which is pretty good, and really don't need more as this one is pretty adequate but, go big or go home, right?!
Door-well lights:
Installed
On
Covered
Map Lights:
Here you can see the difference between the standard map and the led light.
I am going to try to get out and take some pics at night to show the brightness in the van compared to the old bulbs(which will mean i will have to stick an old bulb in there to take the pics because i didn't take any before pics)
But this should give you an idea of what is possible, let me just tell you the difference is Night and Day!!! Literally!
On a side note:
I ended up putting bulbs in my roommates honda and toyota pickup truck, once again the change was like night and day, before you could barely see, now you can see everything inside.
