EJC

The lighting in the ES350 trunk stinks, this is no secret.



I decided to install 12" Compact Flourescent lighting in the trunk to improve the situatiion. Cost for the kit was $10.20 on Amazon. These are actually computer lights but work fine in the car.

The Install was pretty simple.

I could not find the location of the fuse in the manual, so I decided to try it with the socket live. If I blew a fuse, I would now be able to find its' location. But, i didn't blow a fuse.

I popped the socket with a screw driver to check the wiring and polarity.
Socket is a 2 wire unit - purple=pos, black = ground. Checked with a vom to be certain. The wires are very thin so I decided not to splice onto them, and pulled the light to see if I could get into it.



I marked the polarity on the side of the light unit (this is an after shot with new wires in place)



I popped the gray plastic cover - real easy, not a tight fit - and soldered wires on either side of the bulb socket. Remember to watch polarity!





Because I wanted to have enough room to work on the socket if necessary, I spliced some extra wire onto the lead.







I put the bulb unit back into the trunk lid



Mounted the Power Supply and bulbs with velcro



Taped the wires up to the trunk lid





And the now improved lighting

MadMax96

Nice - can you post a better pic of the light unit itself? The results are outstanding!

Next time you solder wires together, try using some heat shrink tubing, it will never come off and looks better too.

EJC

Here is a shot of all the components.
2 12" Bulbs
1 power supply
Wiring harness.

I cut the red & black wires at the computer power plug and tossed out all of the computer parts. The red & Black wires connect to the cars power and plugs into the power supply. The bulbs mount w/ velcro, in the past I have also used silicone adhesive, and they plug intothe opposite end ofthe power supply. WATCH POLARITY!



I was thinking of using heat shrink tub0ing but was a bit lazy, I had it right there in the soldering box. In actuality takes about the same time as taping.