Isnt there a walkthrough guide somewhere here for a LED/Cathode install on a tC? I read the walkthrough for a xB, and I understood it, but the guy didnt really go into much detail what you actually hafta do and where to attach wires and such. I am not a bad electrician, I just dont know this kinda stuff.
Any help would be awesome...also links. Mostly links.

 

https://www.scionlife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22943

May help a little bit.

 

That helps but not really.
I did read it though.
I just want to know specifics on wiring up a switch and so on. I am not a very good electrician, just want to know some basics and crap when wiring up LEDS and cathodes and crap if I want to do it...I probably will, so I really want to know specifics.

 

Then I'm not the person to ask. Sorry.

 

first, look up the guide telling you how to completely gut the interior of a tC. It was written by Mandos and tells you how removal every interior panel in the car. This will be of great use to you when you want to hide wires and such.

next, run a search for "wire grommet" A thread should come up telling you how to get wires from the engine bay into the cabin without having to drill any new holes.

Go to home depot or something and get a good wire stripper/cutter/crimper tool. it WILL be invaluable with a project like this.

Cheap wire can be found at autozone. I just got 2 100 foot rolls of both red and black 16 awg wire. I only used 80 feet or so of positive and 10 feet or so of negative. You can also get your switches and fuse holder here. If your going to be doing both cathodes and led's, i'd buy two switches to put them on different circuits. For the fuse holder, get one made for the ATM sized fuses (the mini ones). Try and find one that has something that goes over the fuse and protects it from the elements. Get a variety pack of mini fuses. you'll only be using either the 3 or 5 amp fuse though.

Butt connectors, male spade connectors, female spade connectors, and ring terminals would not be a bad idea to go out and get either. I used the spade connectors for all my LED's so if 1 goes bad, it only takes 30 seconds to switch them out.

Go buy as many LED's and cathodes as your going to want. for example, i bought 4 12" cathode kits (1 for each footwell) in white, 2 4" cathode kits (1 for each side of the hatch) in blue, and 30 prewired LED's in blue from oznium.com. The prewired LED's save alot of hassle so i recommend them. Buy a few extra led's because i had a couple duds and one actually blew up into many pieces when it powered up. I think it's easier to have 1 transformer for each footwell when wiring in the cathodes. You don't have to worry about stretching the wires of the cathodes this way (you can't extend the wires attached to the cathodes, so the distance you can stretch away from the transformer is limited)

alright, so now you have your wiring supplies and your cathodes/leds. Now it's time to start wiring-

crimp a ring terminal to the red wire. Cut off 6-12 inches of red wire. Crimp on the fuse holder with a butt connector. I also wrapped this connection with electrical tape because it could be exposed to water in the engine bay. Crimp the red wire onto the other end of the fuse holder and run it into the engine bay up to where the switch panel is. Attach the red wire to the "IN" prong of the switch. if running cathodes and led's, splice in a small piece of red wire and attach it to the "IN" prong of the second switch.

As it stands right now, this is what the wiring looks like (all red wiring should've been used in this step btw)-

Battery----fuseholder---through firewall----switch
l________switch

^forum formatting wont let that second line be in the correct place. That splice going to the second switch should be made after the "through firewall" part.

So now we have two switches with power. switch 1 is going to be cathodes, and switch 2 is going to be leds. lets start with cathodes.

take out the front 2 seats. attach red wire to the "OUT" prong of the cathode switch. Take this wire and run it behind the center console. Run it up on top of the front passenger footwell (hopefully where you can't see it when sitting in the seat). Run the wire down behind the passenger kick panel. from there run it under the passenger side door sill. About half way down the length of the door sill, make a turn with the wire and go underneith the carpetting. When you remove your seat, you'll see that a hole is already in the carpet under the passenger and driver seats where the airbag wires run. Run the red wire up through these holes in the carpet. leave about 6-8" of extra wire laying on floor (to allow the seat to slide forward and back freely without tearing wires out).
move up the front passenger footwell. remember where you ran that wire through here a little bit ago? well, now your going to splice into it. splice in a 6" or so wire.
Move back to where the switch is. Splice in a foot or two of wire a couple of inches from the "OUT" prong of the switch.
Make another splice a couple of inches from the "OUT" prong of the switch. This wire is going to run down behind the driver kick panel, under the driver door sill, under the carpet under the drivers seat, and emerge through the hole in the carpet under the drivers seat. Don't forget to leave an extra half of a foot or so of wire laying there to allow for seat movement.

So now we have power in all 4 foot wells. Now it's time to run the grounds. I'll just tell you how i did mine. You may find others though. there's lots in this car.

run black wire from the hole under the passenger seat under the carpet, under the passenger door sill, and up behind the kick panel. There's a ground bolt here. When you take off the kick panel, the bolt holding the bottom of the glove box on nearest to the door goes into the frame. This is a great ground. Attach a ring terminal to your black wire and attach to this bolt.
Same thing goes for grounding on the driver side. Run wire from under the drivers seat, under the driver side door sill, and up behind the kick panel. there's another bolt here staring you in the face. attach a ring terminal to this bolt.
To run a ground to the front passenger footwell, splice into the ground already run on the passenger side and bring the wire to the footwell.
same goes for the driver side. splice into the existing ground wire and bring to the footwell.

now we have both power and ground in each footwell. Now comes the easy part.

to give light to the rear footwells, your going to need 2 cathode tubes stacked on top of each other. 1 tube doesn't drop low enough under the seat. The cloth at the back bottom part of the seat will block 95% of the light. By using 2 tubes one on top of the other, the second tube gets low enough to emit light past the cloth. do this under both seats. I used zipties. same thing for the transformer, ziptie that thing to something under the seat. reinstall the seats and attach the red wire you ran to the red wire comming out of the transformer. same for black.

the panel under the glove box comes out. It's held in by a couple of clips. Take it out. near the front of it (front behind towards the passengers legs) drill 2 holes. Hold the cathode tube up and ziptie it through those holes. Same thing for the transformer except you want the holes to be in the back. you want to see the light, not the transformer or wiring. ziptie the transformer to the back part of the panel. Reinstall the panel. connect the red to red and black to black.

To attach the tube to the drivers side, I ended up drilling 2 small holes into the plastic right in front of the knee airbag. It was a pain in the butt to get a ziptie through the holes, but with enough wiggling i attach the tube. Ziptie the transformer to some wire bundle under the dash. Attach red to red and black to black.

flip your cathode switch and make sure everything lights up. You should have 1 tube for each front footwell and 2 tubes under the front seats to light up the rear footwells. err... don't forget to put a fuse in the fuse holder before you test everything. I thought all my cathodes were blown when i tried this the first time. Silly me forgot to put a fuse in! After you check to see if everything is working, turn the switch off and take out the fuse.

Cathodes= done


I'll tell you LED's tommorow. They're pretty easy to do, they jus take for fricking ever.

 

If that does't help or you have some more specific questions, ask Randode. He has been pimping Scions here in the Valley for as long as they have been in town and does unbelievable work. You can check out his site @ http://www.randode.com

 

Wow....that is a long ___ writeup....Now I take the grounds off the cathodes and ground them from the cathode, not the switch, right?
Sorry, I am a retard.

 

when you order cathodes (from oznium anyways), your going to get 2 cathode tubes, a transfomer, and a short length of red and black wire attached to a connector.



ziptie the cathodes up where you want to put them. The wires comming out of the cathodes have a connector on them. They plug into one side of the transformer. The red and black wires also have a connector on them. Plug that into the other side of the transformer.

connect the red wire that you ran to the red wire connected to the transformer. Connect the black wire that you ran to the black wire connected to the transformer.

 

What exactly am I grounding? Thats where I am most confused, because I dont really work with switchs, I install subs and amps and that kinda crap, and screw around with electrical, I dont really do this kinda stuff...so sorry if I sound retarded.

But where did the black wire come from? In your write up, you talk about attaching a red wire to the in and out prongs of the switch. Thats where I am also really confused.

 

bump.. for my own future reference when i plan to do my cathodes.

 

the black wire comming out of the cathode transformer that attaches to the bolt going intot he body of the car allows the electrical current to run back to the negative on the battery. The chassis of the car is connected to the battery so to ground anything out all you have to do it make a connection with metal on the frame of the car somewhere. all electrical circuits have to go out of the positive terminal, through whatever device you want to power, and tehn make their way back to the negative. The reason your grounding the transformer is so that the power can get back to the battery.

The switch breaks apart the power wire. The whole circuit is-

battery-fuseholder-switch-cathode transformer-ground


the fuse protects the whole circuit from pulling too much current and melting wires and such. The switch allows you turn things on and off as you wish.

as for your question of where the black wire came from-
"So now we have power in all 4 foot wells. Now it's time to run the grounds. I'll just tell you how i did mine. You may find others though. there's lots in this car.

run black wire from the hole under the passenger seat under the carpet, under the passenger door sill, and up behind the kick panel. There's a ground bolt here. When you take off the kick panel, the bolt holding the bottom of the glove box on nearest to the door goes into the frame. This is a great ground. Attach a ring terminal to your black wire and attach to this bolt.
Same thing goes for grounding on the driver side. Run wire from under the drivers seat, under the driver side door sill, and up behind the kick panel. there's another bolt here staring you in the face. attach a ring terminal to this bolt.
To run a ground to the front passenger footwell, splice into the ground already run on the passenger side and bring the wire to the footwell.
same goes for the driver side. splice into the existing ground wire and bring to the footwell. "

I don't understand why your so confused. it really isn't all that difficult.

 

Because I own at paint, I drew you up a little diagram to help you visualize-



lemme know if that helps.

 

Wow. Even I understand that!

Who needs Adobe!?

 

Yeah, that's a pretty sweet diagram. Pretty much impossible to screw up with that.

 

just for reference, the wire after the fuseholder and before the splice going to the second switch is where it will go through the grommet in the firewall. That's just an FYI so y'all can figure out where things go in the car :D

 

I really get it now. I was just confused, because your like, attach the black wire to that other black wire, that apparently didnt have a clue where it came from, and now I really get it.
Sorry for my retardism. I completely get it now. Its pretty much basic electrical, anything that has power, hasta have a ground. I knew that, but didnt really think about it too hard.
Thanks for all the awesome help. Helps alot.

This should be like a DIY help guide if you need help on the cathode/LED thing.

Also, I am gonna run one switch to run the LEDs/cathodes, because it would be cool for it all to come on at once.

 

Ohh yeah....and cant I hook the switch to a fuse in the fuse box so that I dont hafta worry about killing my battery?

 

yes. the company littelfuse makes a product called "add-a-circuit". it's a fuse holder that plugs into an open slot in fuseboxes. you can get it at any autozone or advanced auto parts.

inlcuded in the box is the fuseholder w/ a red wire attached, and then a small assortment of fuses of different amperages. pretty much this little device combines the battery and fuseholder parts of my diagram into one piece.

to use it the way you want, your going to have to get out a test light, ground one lead to the frame of the car and then start poking around the fuse box underneith and to the left of the steering wheel. your going to want to find an open fuse slot that goes live when the key is turned to the on position but goes dead when the key is in the off position.

I would've done my install this way, but i didn't feel like poking around my fuse box. Instead i got a switch with a blue led indicator on it. When the switch is in the on position, the led is a bright blue and then the led is off when the switch is off. The led tells me if the circuit is on or off. The LED being on doesn't let me casually forget to turn the lights off and kill the battery. doing it this way also lets you run your lights without having to have your key in the car.

lighted switches have 3 prongs. they have the "IN" and "OUT" prongs like the switches in my diagram, and then the third prong is a "GROUND" prong. to wire it, have red wire from the battery go to the "IN" prong, have red wire come from the "OUT" prong and go to the rest of the circuit, and then have black wire go from the "GROUND" prong to a ground wire you've run or just throw a ring terminal on it and connect it to a bolt that goes into the frame of the car.

 

Good write up Neo ..

Oh and btw. by all means ... do not cut the cathodes (white) wire to extend them to make them longer to connect to the transformer. You will cut the circuit and it will cause the cathode the flicker, dim, or not turn on.

I had to learn the hard way

 

mods, there is alot of good information on this topic in this thread. I've done a writeup and have a diagram. any chance we could get it added to tech?