Driver Side Door Lock Light Ring Upgrade

This is a How-to that I originally posted on the MR2OC.com forums. I am sorry for the blurry pictures, I could not tell that the camera had not focused correctly until after I was done. I'm not sure if I called this the right thing but basically I changed out the stock green light that shines on the outside driver door lock. Its a faint green and I will show you how to put in "super" bright led. I put this in the interior sections because its along the same lines as the ignition light ring.

1. remove the door panel. search google for "mr2 door wiring" or look in the BGB to find out how to remove the door panel. your door should look like this.



2. remove the interior door handle assembly. to do this remove the two screws on either side of the handle. for the lock rod, unfasten the white clip and pull out the rod. for the handle rod, undo the clip on the end and pull out the rod. There are a couple of these clips you'll need to take off. Look in the bgb under body on page BO-14 and its the 3rd picture. you just unclip it and swing it out of the way then pull out the rod.


3. remove the lock cylinder. To do this you'll need to remove two screws and undo another rod hook like in step 2. You can see the lock cylinder through the far left hole in the door. its just under the top left corner. Its the only hole directly opposite the cylinder. Here's what you can see through the hole. Note there's only one screw in right now, I've already taken out the first one.

There is a little tab that is between the lock and the left screw. You have to bend this little tab back so you can rotate and pull out the cylinder. you can see the tab better in this picture. its on the remaining screw.

after you get the lock free, you'll have to remove the whitish-yellow clip on the back of the cylinder, its real easy to get off, just pull off one side and then it falls off. You must also remove the pink connector. it just slides out, this is the green light that you will be replacing. Now you have the lock out and set it aside. here you can see the green light lit up. it is resting next to the whitish-yellow clip that you need to remove also.

4. replace the light. First cut off the pink connector. You can see in this picture where the old light went in.

now you must make the LED the same or close to the same size as the stock light.

I used a dremel to shape it and here it is for a test fit.

NOTE:Others have gotten a better final result by not using resistors at all.
Then create the LED string. solder together 180ohm resistor (in my case I used 100+47+47 because radioshack didn't have a 180) to the LED positive end and solder wire to the negative end. I heat shrinked the resistor string for protection and rigidity. You can see it all soldered and heat shrinked up in this picture.

In this picture I used hot glue to keep the LED in place which ended up coming off so I used some epoxy. Also not picture is the LED after I wrapped in in some aluminum foil. I figured it would reflect a little more light out the lock end. Turns out it didn't make too much difference but what the hell. Now solder up the positive end of the led string to the white wire and negative end to the black wire. If you do this whole mod with the door open and the battery still plugged in, the LED should light up and let you know that you have it wired correctly.


5. close it up. Now do everything in reverse order to put everything back to normal. Here's what it looks like in my very well lit parking deck. I put hand around to to try and make it dark. It's not too much brighter than stock but its not ugly green.


This is how my experience turned out and as you can see it is not too bright. If I were to do it again, I would remove the resistors so it will be brighter. I will eventually go in and take them out and show a comparison picture.