A fun trick for the Opt7 Interior lighting kit. (with pics)

So I got the kit, got it installed, got the accessory wire hooked in, and the kit works great. Doors open, lights turn white. Door closes, it fades to pre-set. And it was throwing plenty of light in the front exactly like I wanted it to. The problem was in the back...

With the way the seats are in the 3rd Gen Tacomas, if you mount them flat against the underside of the seat, they really don't throw much light. And since I'm using it as a way for the floorboard to be visible, I knew I needed to mount them lower. However, there is a pretty good lip hanging down towards the back to the seat so I needed to figure out a way to mount the lights lower. So I redneck engineered a hanging bracket set out of what came with the kit.

So first up, grab one of the mounting brackets and one of the smaller zip ties. Run it through like so.


Then, you're gonna run it back through what was intended to be a screw hole in the back middle of the bracket.


Then, you're gonna thread it back up through the top slit.


And you're gonna pull it through until you've got a singular loop for the light to pass through (this will use the zip tie to hold the light to the bracket) and both ends should be coming out of the same slit at the top. (Sorry I couldn't get a clearer pic. But it gives you the idea still.)

Ok. Now to get the light on the bracket. You're just gonna slide it over one of the ends of the light, making sure to place the flat back against the flat part of the bracket.

Once you get it roughly where you want it, reach up underneath the seat and find the crossbar that is closest to the rear of the front seat. Find a gap in that and now you know where your zip tie is gonna run. Slide your bracket down the light until it is between two of the bulbs on the strip in the area you're gonna want it. Press the light back firmly into the bracket and then tighten the loop that is holding it in place.


Now, you should have a fairly long tail to your zip tie. Loop that up and over the bar underneath the seat and bring it back around to the head. Slide it through until you hear the first couple of clicks. (if you didn't pay attention to which side was threaded before you started this and now you can't get it to click at all, you've gotten it upside down. Pull the zip tie out of your bracket and flip it over.) Now you can make your adjustments to make sure the bar is sitting where you want it. Go back and adjust the slack in your zip tie (remember to leave some room for it to hang low enough to clear that lip at the back of the seat) until you're happy with the height and how much light it is throwing towards the back of your seat now. Trim off the excess zip tie.

Note: The zip tie on the right is the one mounted correctly. The one on the left was just a placeholder to show how the top portion of this hanging bracket should look once it's connected to the seat. DO NOT mount anything to only wires underneath your seat.

As you can see, this simple no additional money trick easily doubles the light output in your rear seat while still hiding the light source. Both in white...

Or your preset color.


And there ya go. Too easy. This took me all of maybe an hour and that involved me thinking up how to do the brackets. And the only tool I used were wire cutters to trim off the excess zip tie.

 

Looks good!

 

Yep! Now I can find the ice cream that rolled out of the grocery bag BEFORE it melts. Finding things in the floorboard is even easier than in the daylight without it.