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2017 Ambient Lighting No Longer Above Glove Box?!

TDavis

1000 Post Club
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#81
Just take 4 short pieces of solid core 18 gauge wire and strip them at both ends. Stick one of the stripped ends into the back of the OEM plug along each of the wires coming out of the back of the plug. Then stick the other stripped end of each short pieces of wire into the front of the female plug on the new harness.
Just had time to do this. Did everything and for certain colors the glovebox light bar is sometimes a completely different color then the footwell/cup holders. Red is the only color that matches and the colors have a slight flicker to them. All connections are tight
 


Ethan w

New Member
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Location
Portland
#82
TDavis. I have tried to reply to this thread to be helpful a few times with no reply. So I'll try one last time (1) you can route that harness the correct way with a lot less of a hassle then making a new harness. (2) look at manufacture date on the harness you ordered if it has a manufacture date on it of 7/2011 there is an issue with the footwell led lights. I had the same thing happen with it hooked up properly with no splices or additions. I returned it to ford and received a new one with no issues. I installed the new harness and all was well. Hope this helps. Again if you or anyone else wants any info or pictures on how to route it the factory do not hesitate to reply.
 


TDavis

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#83
TDavis. I have tried to reply to this thread to be helpful a few times with no reply. So I'll try one last time (1) you can route that harness the correct way with a lot less of a hassle then making a new harness. (2) look at manufacture date on the harness you ordered if it has a manufacture date on it of 7/2011 there is an issue with the footwell led lights. I had the same thing happen with it hooked up properly with no splices or additions. I returned it to ford and received a new one with no issues. I installed the new harness and all was well. Hope this helps. Again if you or anyone else wants any info or pictures on how to route it the factory do not hesitate to reply.
Sounds like my issue. I'll take out the harness and light bar out to see the manf. date on it and check back from there.
 


Messages
7
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0
Location
Fountain
#84
Quick Question about the Y Harness option

If I go with the Y harness option as you did, do I only use a small portion of the new harness to connect the new LED strip? Also, where did the 2 extra LEDs for the glove box come from, the new harness?

Thanks for the help!
 


Messages
475
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227
Location
Dublin, OH
#85
The new harness is prewired with the LEDs and it will be obvious which one of them snaps onto the end of the light bar. That's the only one I used and just zip tied the rest of the harness out of the way under the dash. Sure, the other LEDs come on, but they are harmlessly stuffed up under the dash. I did not attempt to cut up the new harness at all, which might destroy it. As long as the one LED I needed for the light bar was working, I was good to go.
 


TDavis

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#86
TDavis. I have tried to reply to this thread to be helpful a few times with no reply. So I'll try one last time (1) you can route that harness the correct way with a lot less of a hassle then making a new harness. (2) look at manufacture date on the harness you ordered if it has a manufacture date on it of 7/2011 there is an issue with the footwell led lights. I had the same thing happen with it hooked up properly with no splices or additions. I returned it to ford and received a new one with no issues. I installed the new harness and all was well. Hope this helps. Again if you or anyone else wants any info or pictures on how to route it the factory do not hesitate to reply.
Got my new harness in today. Haven't tried it yet but the build date on it is 7/15/2011. Do I keep ordering until I get a different build date or are just some built in 7/2011 bad?
 


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Dublin, OH
#87
Got my new harness in today. Haven't tried it yet but the build date on it is 7/15/2011. Do I keep ordering until I get a different build date or are just some built in 7/2011 bad?
Once the side panel is off the center console you can easily disconnect your OEM harness and plug in your new one to make sure the LEDs are lit with no issues. If you decide to piggyback, you only care about the LED inside the connector that will snap onto the light bar.
 


TDavis

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#88
Once the side panel is off the center console you can easily disconnect your OEM harness and plug in your new one to make sure the LEDs are lit with no issues. If you decide to piggyback, you only care about the LED inside the connector that will snap onto the light bar.
Yeah my other harness did light up but it has a flicker to it and the LED light bar wouldn't match the color of the rest of the ambient lighting besides red. My piggyback is all done and ready just need to connect the new harness to see if I just received a faulty harness.
 


TDavis

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#89
Put in the new harness this afternoon after work. It works how it should now! I guess I got a faulty harness to begin with. Funny thing is that the build date on the good harness is 7/2011 and the build date on the bad one was 6/2010. Lights work how they should now and I'm going to route the extra 2 LEDs from the harness to be inside the glovebox so that I have lights for the glovebox. There is a hole and slit on the left side of the glovebox so that gives perfect room to route the wires through there.

The light bar is done. I just mocked up the 2 extra LEDs in their spots that I will soon mount them too. You cannot see the LEDs when looking into the glovebox normally, as seen in the blue ambient picture. The pink ambient picture is where you would have to duck down far in order to try to see them. So they're hidden from normal view.





 


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30
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Location
Nicholasville
#90
I was looking to do some experimenting with this and when I tried to take out the side panel on the passenger side I couldn't decide if I just needed to pull harder on the panel to get it out or if I was missing a fastener somewhere. The only thing that was obvious to me was the plastic screw and pin thing. I stopped and thought I would ask here before having to figure out how to explain to my wife what I broke and why.

Am I missing something or do I just need to apply more brute force?
 


TDavis

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#91
I was looking to do some experimenting with this and when I tried to take out the side panel on the passenger side I couldn't decide if I just needed to pull harder on the panel to get it out or if I was missing a fastener somewhere. The only thing that was obvious to me was the plastic screw and pin thing. I stopped and thought I would ask here before having to figure out how to explain to my wife what I broke and why.

Am I missing something or do I just need to apply more brute force?
They're just plastic/metal clips that snap in. All you need to take out is that plastic rivet screw then give it a good yank(carefully).
 


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Dublin, OH
#92
They're just plastic/metal clips that snap in. All you need to take out is that plastic rivet screw then give it a good yank(carefully).
Get your fingers under the panel as close as you can to the front and rear clips and then work around if the whole thing does not just pop out. You want to pull as straight back as possible on each clip. Also, this is best done when the interior is not freezing cold if you live where you get cold winter weather. The likelihood of snapping off a clip will be way less if it is warm.
 


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SIERRA VISTA
#93
It is a straight drop in. There are a couple options you can do.

1 - factory type install where you have just the 3 lights. L & R Footwells, and above glove box.
2 - Add on. Splice the new harness into the old and gain 2 extra LED lights plus the glove box.
3 - Add on. Make a female to double male molex wire Y harness. Where you plug the female into the console harness and the male plugs into the 2 LED harnesses.

Pop out the plastic filler above the glove box, snap in the new light bar. There are 3 long tabs holding the filler piece in. Pull the glove box and you can reach them easily.
The wire harness plugs in the left and right footwell lights and the dash light bar. If you want to route the wire the same as the original then you are going to have to pull the center console.
Then plug in the harness where the old harness is. Passenger side console, behind the side cover. The plug is the middle one.

So to recap, you need:
BE8Z-13E701-A Light bar
BE8Z-14A411-A Wire Harness

I chose to make a y harness so I can use the extra LED for the glove box, plus I can return it to stock if needed.











This was an excellent write up! I just wanted to post that I found where you can get the factory connectors. They are available from Mauser Electronics (part numbers (571-6-1419166-1, 571-1456983--1). These don't come with the wires or pins and sockets. I bought a bag of 2 pin JST connectors from Amazon to harvest the pins and sockets from. There might be a better source for the pins and sockets, but I didn't know what they were called.


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Location
Orlando
#94
lol dammit friend, i wish you posted that just prior to this weekend. I would have done it that way.
 


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Location
Nicholasville
#96
I can help with the pins and sockets. They are also available from mouser, part #'s 571-1-1419158-6-CT and 571-1393367-1-CT

My experimenting was to see if I could wire in a generic RGB LED strip and control it through the cars ambient lighting system. First I tried just wiring directly to the strip, which failed. As it turns out, the car uses common cathode to drive the RGB LEDs while what I had was common anode. So I went looking for common cathode RGB LED strips and they are really hard to find. When you do find them they are 2-3 times the cost of what you can pick up a common anode strip for, and you can find those things everywhere.

I did some looking to find a way to use a common anode strip from a common cathode driver. I did not find that, but I did find someone going the other way with it. The same principle should apply so I went to tinkercad to draw up a schematic that would be close to see if I was even on the right track.



The arduino in the image is running a sketch that just cycles through some colors. Tinkercad only had a common cathode RGB LED in the available parts so I simulated them both with the red green and blue LEDs. The simulation ran and the LEDs turned on and off as expected so it was time to breadboard it and take it to the car.

[video]https://youtu.be/81AGGOCzabo[/video]
 


Messages
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93
Location
SIERRA VISTA
#97
I can help with the pins and sockets. They are also available from mouser, part #'s 571-1-1419158-6-CT and 571-1393367-1-CT

My experimenting was to see if I could wire in a generic RGB LED strip and control it through the cars ambient lighting system. First I tried just wiring directly to the strip, which failed. As it turns out, the car uses common cathode to drive the RGB LEDs while what I had was common anode. So I went looking for common cathode RGB LED strips and they are really hard to find. When you do find them they are 2-3 times the cost of what you can pick up a common anode strip for, and you can find those things everywhere.

I did some looking to find a way to use a common anode strip from a common cathode driver. I did not find that, but I did find someone going the other way with it. The same principle should apply so I went to tinkercad to draw up a schematic that would be close to see if I was even on the right track.



The arduino in the image is running a sketch that just cycles through some colors. Tinkercad only had a common cathode RGB LED in the available parts so I simulated them both with the red green and blue LEDs. The simulation ran and the LEDs turned on and off as expected so it was time to breadboard it and take it to the car.

[video]https://youtu.be/81AGGOCzabo[/video]
Wow! Solid work! And thank you for posting those part numbers.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk
 


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Location
Orlando
#98
dude that is amazing. Def want to see what you do with that, and how you did it with the arduino
 


Messages
30
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9
Location
Nicholasville
#99
The arduino in the image was just to emulate the driver used in the car. All I did there was grab the example rgb sketch from the arduino site and pasted it into the simulation.

The next step is to wire it up nice, attach the mosfets to a heatsink (might not be necessary but its quick to do) and maybe put it all in a little enclosure. I plan to at least Y off the original (for the footwell light and dash light, maybe) and then have some type of connection out to the external RGBs.

I just think its cool that I can have more RGBs match the cars ambient light, not sure what I am going to do with them yet.
 


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Location
Milwaukee
Tackling this project now. Using hispirish methods.


Do I now cut off red plastic ends and splice them together? Any other tips greatly appreciated.


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