I mentioned this easy mod in a couple of recent posts, but now that I've added a significant safety UPGRADE to the car I feel much better about suggesting that folks can remove the little light bulbs in the door-edge "courtesy" lights to mitigate the door-left-ajar battery drain problem that seems so common. I can leave the doors open all day with the car powered off, such as at the car shows and energy festivals, without any risk of draining the 12V battery. . http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/dcty/ . _H*
I was about to comment on the safety bit then saw you have it covered! The reflective bit works well on the rear doors that don't have courtesy lights.
One of the first things I did to both the 2005 and 2007 Prius was to add retro-reflective tape to the doors and on the bottom of the hatch (visible when open). The next thing I did was change the "courtesy" lights in the doors to side-firing LEDs. I rather like seeing what I'm putting my foot into, so eliminating the door lights wasn't a consideration. Dropping their power use obviously was.
So where did said side-firing LEDs come from, or did you hack something together using the lamp housings? . _H*
Hi Hobbit. I got a set of these LED lamps. No modification of the lamp housing necessary. I replaced all the interior/accessible lamps with LEDs from warden_jp2002. The lamps ship from Hong Kong, so it takes a while to get the order. I was thinking of tricking out the signal lamps with chrome bulbs, but sort of lost interest, though I may still.
I bought a set of the flank LEDs for my license plate lights and I ordered a second set to see if I could use them to replace the door courtesy lights. The only modification I made was to wrap a 1/4" strip of electrical tape around lamp between the LED and the terminals. My concern was the proximity of some of the components to the metalic lamp holder in the housing. The electrical tape had an added benefit of making the lamp fit a little better in the lamp holder.
Bill, those LED's look great!! are they really just "plug and play"?? no re-wiring required?? fits in the same socket, etc?
Hi Rangerdavid. Yes, those LED lamps just slide right in where you take the bulb out. Usbseawolf2000 started a topic back in March of this year on LED replacements lamps, which see for further discussion. I didn't need to add any tape like 8AA did, but as we all say, YMMV.
Nice find. The "flank" LEDs look like they are better suited to the door courtesy lights than the other LED replacements I bought, so I just ordered a pair. I'll use the others to replace the map lights.
