Footwell Lighting Help

[bdg4512]

I finally got my courage up and tried putting some lights in my footwells. I used some side marker lights that I got from my local parts store that use a 194 bulb, so it should be pretty bright. Long story short, I wire them with a constant 12V source and ground them on the dome lights "factory grounds," only to find out they are extremely dim. I can't figure out why they would be so dim, I even tried swapping out bulbs and grounding points to no avail. Does anyone have any insight into this type of problem? Any and all help will be greatly appreciated!

-Ben

[Bob98SR5]

ben,

1st, why are you wiring to a constant 12v instead of a switched? also, what gauge wire are you using? and where did you ground it the 2nd time? did you scrape paint? was it a clean ground? pics would be helpful

have you seen jason burtman's very simple footwell lighting writeup? or better yet, paddlenbike has a great one too but its not over here yet. pm him

bob

[slosurfer]

YOu could try to PM paddlenbike, I know he recently added footwell lighting to his 4runner.



:lol: Bob you beat me to it.

[bdg4512]

I used a 12v straight from my aux fuse box for cleaner power and I wanted to ground it through the dome light so I have the same functionality from the footwells as I do the dome light(everything is controlled by the dome). I scraped the paint around the factory mounting screws on the dome light and moved around on those, which didn't really help. I'll try and get some pics of what i'm talking about and PM paddlenbike to see what he knows. Thanks again guys!


By the way Bob sorry about your ride, did you find out anything new about her?

[Erich_870]

Did you wire them in series or parallel?

Series will be MUCH dimmer.

Erich

[bdg4512]

Definitely wired in a series, if that would be dimmer, that is probably my exact problem. I'll do some surgery and see if it improves. Thanks for the thought.

[Robinhood4x4]

Measure what the voltage is at the light.

[bdg4512]

ok guys, I rewired them in parallel and they are a lot brighter. I never would have thought it made that big of a difference. I guess I'm always learning something new. Anyways, thanks again for all of your help.

[Cebby]

Series wiring drops the voltage (halved for each connection I think). Parallel will give you the full 12v.

[Robinhood4x4]

Series wiring drops the voltage (halved for each connection I think). Parallel will give you the full 12v.
Not necessarily halved, but rather it depends on the resistance of the things put in series. This goes back to Kirchoff's law.

[Cebby]

Gotcha - I was equating it to speakers, which have a commonly known impedance.