DIY - LED Lighting (Domelight circuit) for CL9 Accord Euro
Disclaimer: The following is provided as a GUIDE ONLY, and neither myself nor Ozhonda take any responsibility for the outcomes of someone else doing the following. You follow these steps at your own risk!
Additionally, I am very new to DIY and this is my first guide, so there may be mistakes/unclear sections. Please let me know of them and I shall try to fix the errors or clarify further. With the way I write, you should read the entire thing first and then go step by step, rather than just going in blind.
Aim: The aim of this guide is to assist in the wiring of LED lights which are on the same circuit as the car's dome lights, so they will turn on/off as your dome lights do (including the fading/dimming) which I used for footwell lighting. Whilst there are a few methods to do this, I found that going through the front driver-side pillar was the easiest method. There are alternatives, but from my understanding, the connection at the fusebox is BEHIND the fusebox itself and is a PITA to get to for our models. It is also possible through the ignition key light, but I think the pillar is still the easiest method.
Please note that the car I did this on was a :honda: 2005 Accord Euro. I don't know too much about the variations between the years, so I don't know how well it would work on other years (and even other Honda models for that matter).
Difficulty : Beginner (This was one of my first DIYs, and I did it with scavenged knowledge from many other sources and then combined them to get it to work)
Required:
- A strip of LED lights (with positive and negative wires)
- Wire Taps (Pic : http://i.imgur.com/ODfuDyY.jpg) (Can be found at Bunnings) (Optional, can solder if you wish)
- Wiring (I used 18AWG wire, can be found at Bunnings, Jaycar and many other places)
- 10A Mini Blade Fuse Tap (Can be found at Jaycar - JayCar Link) (Check your interior light fuse to be sure of the amperage, think the default is 10A)
- Wrench (optional)
- Small flat-head screwdriver or similar
- Scissors (general purpose)
- Electrical Tape
- Cable Ties (optional)
- Fuse Puller (optional)
Steps:
1. Move your driver seat all the way back to have ample room. I forgot to do this and it did make it a bit more annoying.
2. (Optional) Since we're dealing with an area with airbags, I wanted to tread on the side of caution and disconnect my battery. If you are new to this, I recommend that you do the same. Plenty of videos/tutorials that will show you how to do this, but basically you just want to open up your hood, and locate the negative (-) terminal on your battery and use your wrench to remove it, and tuck it somewhere where it won't accidentally move back to the terminal. I suggest also waiting about 30-40mins with it disconnected to ensure the charge has depleted.
3.On your pillar you will notice a little tab that says Airbag. Use your flat-head screwdriver to gently slide underneath this tab and then prop it up.
http://i.imgur.com/7MKRLPV.jpg?1
4. Next you want to rotate it 90 degrees, and then gently pull the pillar cover out, pulling on the tab and whatever parts prop out. This should come out very easily and no force will be necessary.
http://i.imgur.com/JH3c0TW.jpg?1
5. Once you have it open, you should see the airbag on the right/bottom, and your wiring harness on the left/top.
http://i.imgur.com/0yJjNNu.jpg?1
6. Now you need to make a little space, so take your scissors and (very carefully) cut so you have access to the wires.
7. You want to find a green wire with a red stripe and isolate it as we will be using this wire for the ground connection. In the picture it looks a bit orangey/pink, but it should look like a normal traffic light red. There is another green/orange wire in there too which is annoying, so make sure you double check you have the right one.
http://i.imgur.com/Ybovftj.jpg?1
8. Next, take your wiretap and hook it on. Alternatively you can solder the connection if you wish to. At this point in time we aren't going to worry about running it down to the footwell as we want to see if it works first, so leave it as is.
http://i.imgur.com/7dDeBV8.jpg?1
9. Double check with your manual's fuse diagram as to what the interior light fuse is. For mine (and most likely the rest of the CL9s) it was fuse #6. Pull it out using the fuse puller, and then plug the wire tap fuse in.
http://i.imgur.com/p0GfnI3.jpg?1
10. Loosely connect (for testing) the pillar wire to the ground of the LEDs, and the fuse tapped wire to the positive.
11. Reconnect the battery, and check if the lights work the way you want it to. If it isn't the culprit probably is the connection on that green/red wire.
12. Once you're happy with the way it works, its time to properly connect the wires and then clean everything up. I ran my pillar wire down the pillar, and then down and around the side of the dash/door area using tape and cable ties to keep it neat, but its upto you on how to go about wiring and placing the rest of your LEDs.
13. Finally, put the pillar cover back into position, it should slide and pop in very easily, and then just rotate and push the airbag tab back in.
http://i.imgur.com/mbuGLMx.jpg?1
Only had one LED strip to work with, but I will look into getting some more since I got this to work. Ignore the hole in the floor mat, looks like a cigarette burn from the previous owner.
Other Comments:
I'll upload a few pictures later of the finished product and perhaps my wiring of the pillar wire down the door frame, but I only just finished and wanted to write this while the procedure was still fresh in my mind.
