Greetings

Hello all.

My wife and I picked up a used '12 Prius C 4 last night to replace her old Hyundai Elantra. It was a great car, and it's probably staying around for awhile, but her commute into DC was killing us. We found the C with only 8,700 miles, fully loaded sans 16" wheels, and in perfect condition. We were initially planning on a regular or PiP, but the size factor for parking at work chose the C for us. She sent me a picture after she got there this morning of the tiny spot she squeezed into, so no buyers remorse on her part.

It's her car so I don't get to play with it too much, that said I do have a few plans for it. I'll be putting in an auto-dim mirror, probably a backup camera (some nice tutorials on here), thinking of a rear dome light (makes buckling the kiddos into their seats easier), and if she'll let me retrofitting bi-xenon HID projectors into her headlamps. I am a little saddened TRS doesn't yet have an installation bracket for the C like they do for the regular Prius, so I may need to do that the hard way..... or wait until they do. I may do some subtle interior accent lighting.... no floor neons, just a few strategically 5mm LEDs, and throw some additional lighting in the cargo area as well. Oh, and something will definitely be done about the silly bright airbag ON light. I'm not entirely sure what Toyota was thinking there....... my other car has a light which comes on if it's disabled, but otherwise the assumption is it's on. It's also not as bright and not directly in your line of sight. Oh well.

I have a few questions someone can perhaps point me in the right direction for..... Does anyone have pictures of the interior of the C's headlamps? I'm just trying to figure out how much room I'd have to work with, and how everything is mounted inside. Secondly does anyone know much space is above the rear headliner with the moonroof fully opened?

It looks like a nice forum and I'm looking forward to contributing.

 

Haven't gotten much done on the prius recently. Hopefully that changes tomorrow. My auto dimming mirror came in today along with a half dozen prewired LEDs. I'm planning to mount two of them in the headliner or the side trim in the back seat and wire them off of the front dome light. I don't really care about being able to individually activate them from the backseat as reading lights... pretty much as long as there's light on the backseat with the rest of the lights on I'll be happy. I may install one or two in the cargo area depending on how the day goes, and/or under the front dash as floor lights when the interior lights are on. My wife has the car so I can't look at possible mounting locations just yet.

 

Well the mirror is now in, hooked up and working. I managed to open everything up, mount the mirror and run the wiring (not in front of the airbag) in about 10 minutes before dinner last night. I haven't closed everything up quite yet because I still need to route the temperature sensor probe to the front of the car. Yes the car has it's own display, but the wife prefers just being able to look up at the display vs. touch tracing the temp. button. I'm not sure why some are saying this takes an hour or more..... it really just isn't all that involved.

The mirror is a CIPA 36400, and appears to be almost identical to the mirror installed in my '05 Mazda 3. I've installed a few auto-dims in other cars, and I like the CIPA better than some of the more common Gentex mirrors. They all appear to take the same amount of time to dim overall from light hitting them to being fully dimmed. The CIPA mirror seems to dim more gradually over the entire time period vs. the Gentex which wait a little longer and dim much more quickly. I find with those that they start dimming right as I begin to get annoyed with the light, vs. just not really noticing it in the first place.

Hopefully I'll manage to get the lights installed today as well. It's solidly one of the most annoying aspects of the C, the lack of backseat lighting. Probably only mostly annoying because I have kids in car seats and it's handy to have light when you're finding a lost toy, or getting straps sorted out. Still I can't imagine it being all that more expensive to add just a simple repeater for the front light during manufacture.

Yeah, I've not gotten around to the airbag light yet.

 

Well tonight will be the full test of the lights, but as of now they're in and working. And what a frustrating fricking time I had too. Hooked everything up all prettily soldered and shrink wrapped and it didn't work. Took it all apart, tested everything again, redid the ground tapped to the maplight controls. Everything worked. Put it all back together and it gave a small spark and dimmed the lights....... so a short. Took it all back apart, tested, and the passenger LED didn't work. Went to remove it and found the wire had disconnected from the board inside the LED housing. Swapped it out, doubled the layers of heat shrink on every connection in case there was bleed through and reran all the wires. This time around I made sure it worked every five seconds since it was frustrating as hell to get everything together and have it not work.

So the teaser shots.





The general impression I've gotten (granted during the day) is they're a very subtle white light vs. being glaringly bright.

I sort of wanted to wire up lights to the floor, however with all the issues I just ran in to with the wiring being wonky I've put that on hold for now. Plus my wife wants her car back.

 

First off this project should never have been as difficult as it was. Just weird wiring annoyingness. Second, I could just use a bunch of cheap flashlights, except I don't want to hold a flashlight to look for things when my hands are full, and I enjoy doing this kind of project. Point taken though.

Got a chance to check them after dark. Wow. Now I need to swap in white LEDs in the maplights, because..... wow. Bear in mind the iphone isn't the best suited camera to low light photography, but still it sort of gets the essence of it. To make myself happy I now just need to put some in the cargo area to improve lighting there, and under the dash in the front. My wife isn't too keen on the whole idea, mostly because it takes the car away.

The lights I used are these. About $2/ea.

Stock front lights


New rear lights


Both from the front