I have the same issue with not being able to see in the back of my G5 so I put leds under the seat. They are only hooked into the door switch right now but I am going to be adding in toggle switches (already have) to allow me to turn them on at any time.

 

Thanks for the tip... they aren't bright and I kinda like it. but for a good idea

Thats ******* cool dude. I wanna put neons/LED's in my interior as well and I was gonna toggle switch them, but I kinda like the idea of them turning on automatically when the door is open. How did you do that? I am sure you just tapped the switch for the door but pics would be kool. I wouldnt mind having the lights turn on with toggle switch and when the doors open.

 

Hey LED folks, did you lose your theatre-style lighting? Sounds like a good idea to switch them out, but I don't want to lose the theatre-style.

 

i believe its done with a relay, and the togle switch just bypasses the relay

 

Mine did at least. When you close the door, it stay on for a couple seconds then cuts. You can't really do that with LED's. They're basically on or off, correct?

 

Nope, I didnt lose mine. Since all it is doing is reducing the power to the lights gradually, they still dim, just like any other light being starved for power.

 

Mine still dim slowly but it isn't as smooth as the original lights.

 

red saves your night vision but still has the same output so red would be an ok color

 

I had a little blue neon actually under my back seat, so like you couldn't see the tube, but it illumnated the rear floor. It was dope. But then it burned up. lol.

 

Is this the two wires in the wire harness that go into the mirror/dome that supply the door open lighting or is this somewhere else?

 

Jondevos.... how did you hook that up with your lights?

 

I wired them through the door switch. Tomorrow Ill try to do a little writeup.

 

nice, does it work with both doors or just the driver?

 

is there a certain type of diode that needs to be used?

 

OK, so Im not completely finished yet with my led project. I only have the driver side wired up so far. Im going to be doing the passenger side soon too. This is how its going to work. The lights under the dash and under driver seat are hooked to driver door and the lights under dash and under passenger seat will be hooked to passenger door. I am going to have 3 switches in the car to go along with them as well. 2 switches will be so I can turn on the left or right side while the doors are closed (lets say you drop something on the floor). The third switch will be a connecting ground that allow all the lights to come on when either door is opened instead of just the lights on that side of the car.

Wiring them is very easy. I wired the positive into a add-a-fuse. I put the fuse in slot 27 I think. Any slot that is constantly live even with key out will work. I wired the ground into the gray wire that goes to the door switch. When the door is opened the lights are grounded allowing them to come on. All the wires I ran behind the trim pieces on the centre console and under the dash. Only took about 30 min to do and looks awesome.

On a side note I plan on wiring single blue LEDs into the bottom of the door panel to light up the ground below the door when it is open. This will add a lot more visibility while getting in and out of the car.

 

Sounds good, make sure you take some pictures & possibly do a how-to

 

So it turns out that on 2008's they changed the map lights to led. I assume Cobalts are the same, not sure though. Anybody looked yet?

From my limited knowledge of led's, it appears to be a surface mount style. (sorry, can't really see it good in the pic)


When lit it's yellow to fool you into thinking it's a regular bulb that you can change with a blue one that you already bought lol


I don't see anyway to change this light unless you take the mirror apart and desolder it. Any other ideas????

 

That would be the only way to do it . Those OEM circuit boards are so closely spaced and the solder points are so small on the surface mounts you'd about need a solder sucker to recover the solder off the board , then re-solder with new . The entire mirror is likely plastick welded together though , so it may be a can of worms trying .

FYI , the cadillac version of the same mirror uses bright white LED's .

 

I probably won't mess with it. When I had the mirror out, it felt like the actual mirror part might pop off, but I didn't want to break it.

 

here is a how to from the g5 site but it doesnt use the stock mirror

http://www.g5club.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1723