LED replacement for courtesy lights

[GTOger]

I have just completed the replacement of all the interior lights with LED's. I also did the engine-compartment lights, which means I can now leave the hood open for an extended period of time without worrying about the battery.

The main reasons I undertook this project were:
#1: Reduced heat in the fixtures should help to prolong the life of the plastic.
#2: Reduced amperage means less draw on the battery and perhaps fewer "rolling starts".
#3: Better / brighter light output.

One thing I was nervous about is the change in color temperature. That is, the car is of a certain age... I didn't want it to look like some 1990's rice-rocket that's been all blinged out. Honestly, if you walk into your local auto parts store and look for the LED interior lights, there's an obvious target demographic and to my taste, it's not appropriate for the ZR-1. In other words, I wanted the car to be classy and I was concerned that going from the quite yellow tone of the OEM bulbs to the LED's would look out of place.

After doing some searching around, I found an online seller that offers nearly all the bulbs you need to do a complete swap of the courtesy lights, minus the bulb that sits under the back bumper for tire changes. That one is itty-bitty and as yet unavailable. The part that really struck home for me was they offer the LEDs in various color temperatures such as "cool white" (the bluish white), "warm white" (more yellow) and "natural white" (somewhere in between). I chose to split the difference and go with "natural white" which to my eye is the "most white". It's all very subjective, so I'm sure everyone will have their own opinion here. The point is I found a selection so I could make the choice that I liked best for my car.

The job was pretty easy with the caveat of the flood lights in the mirror. The LEDs I got for there are 6-LED clusters and I had to do some whittling down of the outside edge to get them to fit into the housings. Not a big deal, just meant some time with a sharp knife. As best as I can tell, it was simply a matter of removing excess material, and no actual modification to the LEDs or their circuitry was made.

The only "odd" mod was in the engine compartment. For that application I went with a 30-LED panel measuring about 1.6"x1" that uses a festoon-base adapter. I installed the festoon adapter, the plugged the LED panel into it, then zip-tied the LED panel to the festoon. It all fits just fine, but sometimes it feels odd installing things with zip ties. You cannot tell once the glass cover is replaced, and the engine compartment lights are now FAR brighter.

Bottom line, I'm pleased with the results. Here is a comparison in the engine compartment of the LED (left) and the original bulb (right):


And a couple of interior shots (I did NO cleaning, so these are not glamor shots!)