Happy Lunar New Year to everyone.  Hoped you had a good one!

It has been a relaxing one for me and having nothing much to do, I decided to install something new to my car.

Nothing fancy, nothing too technical, just some simple 12 year old technical class tasks.

The car this time is the 2001 Mazda MX-5.  This car has a room light so dim, its basically useless.  When its dark, you can forget about tearing coupons, looking for Touch’n'Go Cards if you dropped it, or something essential like reading your map when lost.  Sure, we all know the MX-5 is not the most practical vehicle to own, but come on, Mazda could have put in a couple more lights couldn’t they?!?

Anyway, since we have a full warehouse of car accessories, I basically have access to numerous types of super bright LEDs at my disposal.  This was something that I have been wanting to do since early 2009, but well, procrastination is always good…

so that I can work on other MORE important stuff.

I chose these

Small and bright enough to fit on one of the panels on the dashboard.

Of course, just a good dose of double sided tape will work well enough to have them fully functional and connected to a on-off switch.  But if that were my standards, I’d rather die or just put something like this instead, something we use in the house.

NO!  I will not have any of those slipshod work… I just got to have them the best, the neatest and something that will make me smile every time I use it.

While surfing Yahoo!Japan, I came across this used switch.  Originally used to disable power to the windows, but it will work for my application too!

Now, time to get the hands dirty and start working.

Firstly, we drill a small hole.

Then get a hole saw the right size and drill it to suit.  Since it is the Lunar New Year, and none of the hardware shops are open.  I just have to use the closest sized hole saw I have.  It would have saved some time if I got the right sized one as I can just drill it through and have it fit perfectly than having to port the hole to get the perfect size.

After we are done with that, time to port it so that it matches perfectly and the LED will sit flushed with the surface.

Trusty Standard Abrasive Head Porting tools to the rescue.

Perfect fitment!

With all that hard work out of the way, time to wire up the car.  Since these LEDs sap very little power, I just thought that its easier to wire the 12V power direct so that I can have it working as and when, rather then having to switch the ignition to Acc.

Some simple wiring work, and everything was hooked up nicely.

Factory style switch.

Super bright footwell!

A shot at night, man, I need shades!

Now, this was how the MX-5 should have come right from the factory.