Illuminating work

The lighting in the back of the T5 isn't great, even for a van, so as a camper it looks dull. 

Time to fix that.

I have looked high and low for suitable lighting for the back of my T5 and either found ideas too complicated, expensive, space consuming of simply ugly.

At some point I was alerted to the idea that kitchen cabinate down lights are generally small enough and run on 12 volt direct currents with an inverter to connect to the houses mains. They can also be picked up for sensible money from your local DIY shop.

I went to B&Q and got a set of 12 LED down lights for £20 (the box was open) and at some point later got a hole saw and some time to get this job done.

I have taken the time to photograph as much as possible for you to do the same should you wish to do something similar.

When planning this, I was particularly keen to keep clutter to a minimum and keep an OEM looking. As such I decided to make these new lights slave off of the sliding door light fitting so there would be no new switches required.

To start off I stripped out the vans interior lights and roof lining. then, with a brew, I got to work on the lamp in my garage.

Modding the light housing

This is the OEM light fitting removed from my T5. The wiring harness plugs into the raised bit on the near left corner (plug facing away) and bulb hides under the white cover. 

The light housing is removed from the van by just pulling down on a short edge as they are only held in by spring clips. Just be careful not to pull on the wiring harness and break it.

The white cover slides off revealing the bulb...

...which, with a push and twist, comes out.

The wiring harness plug socket cover unclips and can be removed revealing the electrical contacts. The clips are fragile so take care and use a lever like a watch makers screwdriver where needed.

The middle contact can be lifted out of the body. We are going to solder our first wire to this.

As the van already provides 12VDC we do not need the down lights inverter. I cut off the connector from the wire that plugs into the inverter from the junction box and stripped back enough insulation to solder.
Take your time here to figure out how much exposed wire and free individual wire you need so you don't end up with an overly tight fit or unnecessary amounts of unprotected wire.

The exposed wires were tinned...

...then the black positive wire was soldered onto the terminal we removed earlier. Again check your clearances and access for the most suitable place to solder to. This worked for me.

Next up I turned my soldering station up to 400 degrees to heat this strip of copper enough to take a blob of solder (I'm using lead free).

Then on goes our white wire.

To get everything to close up I alternately hot knifed and filed out some gaps in the light housing to allow space for the new wires.
Here is the side of the harness plug cover.

The hole is tiny so tough to clean up perfectly. Most importantly make sure the edges are smooth so the wires don't get cut.

The middle terminal can now be slotted back into the light housing...

...and the cover replaced taking care not to trap the wire.

Another gap is needed to be cut in for the white wire. This needs to be deep enough to clear the white bulb cover so a touch deeper than shown here.

A test fit of the cover should be carried out and if all is well, smash in some new LED bulbs (mine were still in the post) and move on.

Rather than having the junction box directly connected to the lamp I decided to cut it off and crimp on some Japanese bullet connectors.

This is done to both ends of the wire, just be sure to not muddle the wires up and fit all the insulators before crimping or it is a big pain to slide them over after.

That is it for the light housing. An alternative, if you don't fancy soldering, is to use flat round terminals like these and just slip them on your bulb like on the picture on the right.

Lights and wires

Now for the fun bit or scary if you prefer.
As you can see from this picture showing the roof lining partially fitted; there is a nice cavity about 20-70mm out from the edge of the board. The depth clearance would be enough according to my light fitting instructions. Lets hope they are right!
The dangling wire is our front lamp wiring harness.

This is the same for both sides although the left side (right of image) is a touch wiring harness heavy.

I measured up so there was a line 35mm in from the edge on either side which I marked on the reverse of the roof lining with a pencil.

I then divided this line by 6 so the lights would be evenly distributed without intersecting any roof braces.

As the main roof braces are at either end and in the middle (where the roof lining break is) this would not be a problem so it was more of a matter of putting the light where I wanted it and spaced so it looked smart.

Once I was happy I drilled a hole on either side of the front board and test fitted a lamp before offering it up to the van to make sure there were no surprises.

All was well so I drilled the remaining holes.

Whilst drilling don't push too hard or you might separate the roof lining carpet from the fibreboard which cold get messy.

With the drilling finished with no mistakes (phew) I pushed the rest of the lamps through.

These were again offered up to the van to catch any problems, which there weren't any.

Finally the wires were loomed together to keep the wiring tidy under the roof lining and to protect the wires from chafing.

I loomed each board so the terminals were all available towards the front light fitting but I didn't loom the rear board to the front board to make fitting and removal simpler.
I double sticky taped the junction box to the front board to keep it in place during manoeuvring and plugged all of the front wires into it. I then passed the wire from the junction box for the front light fitting through the light fitting hole for later fitting.

Fitting

The rear board was replaced with the million plastic clips that I had so enjoyed removing before. I made sure to locate and pass the rear light fittings wiring loom throught the hole for later fitting as that would be a bugger to find later. I also have a long grey antena wire that I fitted a while back to sort a remote central locking issue I had before. This was re-chased into position before I made a start on the front board.

These boards are very flexible and now carying a lot more weight than they were designed for so take care whilst moving them about as you really don't want to crack one.

The front went in after connecting all of the terminals to the junction box. I found that with the board balanced on my head I could get a few clips in to hold it in place before being freed to get the rest in.
Finally the two light fittings can be fitted not forgetting the extra loom for the front one we added at the beginning and the grey trim strip. This has some really crap post clips on it which just fall off all the time or snap. I'm tempted to replace them with velcro at some point.

The results

For such a cheap mod this has had a huge impact on the look of the van as well as its usability. 

I was worried these little lights wouldn't be bright enough but far from it, they are super bright and look superb.

Aside from the standard light bulbs getting changed for LED's as soon as they arrived, I would change a few other things:

1. remove excess wire from each light fitting.
2. possibly do away with the junction box as I'm not sure if it is very suitable for a van.
3. better support the wires coming out of the light fitting with hot glue or some heat shrink.
4. think of a way to have the rear four spot lights to come on with the rear light switch.

I ordered a pair of  43mm 214 LED bulbs on eBay which made things even brighter in the back of the van but more importantly it brought the light temperatures together so everything looked right. These didn't arrive till after this job was done so the pictures still show the incandescent bulbs which show you the difference in light temperature.

I'm very pleased with how this job worked out. I will update this blog entry when/if I get round to the previously mentioned modifications. Otherwise I am just going to enjoy my handywork.