My approach to cargo lighting

I finally got tired of groping in the dark back there. It remains to be seen how well the adhesive will hold up. I do like that they take extensions if I decide later that I want more light. But this looks sufficient.

I connected them to the switched leg inside the lamp, so they are automatic.

 

Thanks! BTW, it took about two hours from opening things up, scrounging wires from various drawers & shelves, getting out soldering equipment, on to reassembling the car.

Not yet, but I think I will.

I may pop it out and take a picture. But it wasn't complicated. If you take out the original light and pop off the gray cover, you can see that there's plenty of surface area to solder on your wires. However, the metal is fairly thick and it's hard to get it hot enough for a good solder joint without melting the plastic (which I did slightly).

I soldered leads onto the inside of the oem light. Then I soldered the driver's side LED pigtail and the long wire to reach the passenger side to those leads and covered the connections with heat shrink tubing. It isn't pretty, but it's hidden. If a wire falls off the oem light, I'll probably have to drill a little hole and solder the wire to that hole.

I thought mine looked terribly yellow even before putting in the LEDs. I think all LED is the way to go, but just haven't gotten around to it.

It's a trade-off. I thought about mounting them up on the sides so they would look down into the cargo area. But then, either I'd have had lots more exposed wire (ugly and vulnerable) or had to drill holes in the plastic. I picked those locations because they were super easy to keep reasonably nice looking and, even if I do fill the cargo area and block them, I'm no worse than before and that's a rare occurrence. If I put a big pile in there all the time, maybe I'd have come to the same conclusion as you.

@potatoesLOL, those do look nice. I saw something similar in the forum from a few years ago. Do they turn off & on with the original hatch light?

 

Thanks!! I'm in Florida, though, so I'd probably have to use a rubber alligator rather than a teddy bear. Although bears and panthers are coming back.

 

Here's a picture.