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This is my first thread on this website although I have consulted it many times before and I was hoping for some ideas for some ICE.
I have a 2001 civic EX. So far I have upgraded all the stock speakers and put 2 12's in the trunk, put red LED's under the dash on a toggle switch, I covered my dome light cover in red brake light repair tape so my dome lights are red.
I'm looking for some relatively cheap (>100$) projects I can do myself. I like doing lighting projects but nothing ive seen in previous forums has really jumped out at me.
Any ideas would be great and I will post pics of the result if I decide to do any of them.
Thanks everybody.

 
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you can make footwell lighting.. grab a couple red CCFL tubes or led strips (just to continue the red lighting trend) and mount them somewhere in the footwellsthat should cost you.. 20 bucks max?

You could also change your dash lights to LEDs.. LEDautomotive.com sells DIY kits. You can also follow their DIY guides to piece your own kits together (and to convert the bulbs to LEDs instead of incandescent lamps. I started out with their kit, then upgraded the LEDs to blue SMD leds.
Really, all you need to get to do that is a bunch of 3mm or smaller LEDs (I got a 100-pack of blue SMD leds for 6 bucks, and a 100-oack of red for 6 bucks, also), a spool of solid 26ga wire. Some solid 20ga wire for a few things (window switch, recirc/ac/defrost indicator lights, and those LEDs royally suck to begin with) and some 470ohm (preferrably SMD) resistors.

 
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Color match you interior trim pieces, it's an old played out idea but it gets alot of positive complements. Just take a can of Krylon made for plastic and carefully remove whatever parts you think would look better other colors. I did two of my A.C. vents and the front in door speaker covers in a nice Sparco blue that looks good with the blue from my Sony head unit.

 
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Thanks for the Ideas guys, I have 2 led tubes in the footwell already on a toggle switch, I just bought my LED's and resistors for the conversion. I like the custom painting interior parts i'll probably have to do that too.

 
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I also put LEDs in my center vents for ***** and giggles. You can only really tell when the vent's pointing towards you, but it looks cool.. lol

 
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Oh man, that's a cool idea! I wish I had gone withh green instead of blue ... Oh check this one out, my friend bought a Dodge Ram and it had red under glow, upon closer inspection by me it was Walmart tow lights... Cheap. But looked good.

 
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I'll take some pics later tonight of my dash

 
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what did you wire all that too? or did you just put it all to a switch and hook it up straight to the battery? and with the dash lights i want to switch all my speedo and stuff to blue to match my paint scheme.lol when i paint the car...lol but yea how do i do that?

 
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talking about the dash lights? or the blue LEDs in the vents?

 
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the dash lights. like idk if yours is the same probably but my speedo lights up red and i'd rather it glow blue.

 
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I have an overlay for my gauge cluster.. As for the dash lights, I converted the bulbs from incandescent to LED by using solid 26ga wire, 470ohm SMD resistors, and blue SMD LEDs

And I can guarantee yours looks like mine.

 
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lol i didnt know if they changed the color in the year.lol cause my friend with the 08 has blue everything and its clean.lol

 
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the color changes came in the 03-05's i think.. Sedans got white numbers with blue rings, coupes got white numbers with red rings\
not sure about the dash lights though.. thats just for the gauge clusters

 
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dude you know alot bout our gen civics. how?lol i mean i know that the ex is like three inches shorter and it has more hp then all the other ones. i also know that it runs a different exhaust and has one inch bigger wheels but thats bout it.

 
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type in 7thgencivic.com and see where it takes you.. and look at my join date.. I've done my homework.. lol

 
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hell yea you have.lol i got a question can you explain this **** **** bitch damn why is there only one word that dont work

 
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Forum censoring

 
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but only the f word?lol

 
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yep. kinda weird like that..

 
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lol yea but i looked up the light thingys and it'll cost 58 somethin to buy and ship it here.

 
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thats every light they have for our gen car.

 
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Dash lights?

If so, I re-did mine for less than 20 bucks in parts
$5 for 100 SMD LEDs on ebay
$3 for a pack of 470 Ohm SMD resistors
$3 for a spool of solid 26 ga wire
$5 for a spool of solid 20 ga wire

I had white and amber SMD LEDs lying around, and I had wire strippers, solder, and a soldering iron already..



2 bulbs for the rotary *****
2 bulbs for the push buttons
1 bulb each for the push button indicator lights
1 bulb each for the cruise/mirror/sunroof buttons
1 bulb for the cruise indicator light
1 bulb for the window switch

used 20 ga wire for each of the pushbutton indicator lights on the dash and the window switch. 26 ga wire was used for everything else. No resistors added to the pushbutton indicator lights on the dash.

 
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^ Timbaland yo... come to my place and install some blue lights in my vic cuz then it would match my deck lol.

 
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Alpine FTW

I need to put another resistor on the cruise indicator light because it's waaaaaaaaaayyyyy too bright. Contemplating whether or not I wanna change my AC indicator light back to green.. Dunno if I quite like the blue indicator light.. If I do switch it to green, the cruise indicator light's changing to green, too

 
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ok so that is like super clean. so thats all i need?lol and imma go get a iron too.lol

 
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just gotta be careful if you decide to go with the SMD (surface mount device) route.. They're hella small and easy to fry/lose. I think I lost and/or fried at least 5 resistors and 3 LEDs. The LEDs mostly because I forgot to put a resistor on the positive line while testing them with my 12VDC power supply.. Either that or they stuck to the iron

here's a reference for how small the components are


That the cm side of the rule, BTW. The amber SMD LEDs are the same size as the white ones, and I doubled up the blue LEDs (soldered together in parallel) just because I wanted the extra brightness.

And here's all the tools I used

1 - Needle point tweezers
2 - Mini Long Nose Pliers
3 - Mini Diagonal Cutters
4 - Mini Bent-Nose Pliers
5 - Mini Needle Nose Pliers
6 - Electrician's Pliers (Mainly used to hold the bulb bases)
7 - Fine tipped soldering iron (I used a 30W iron)
8 - 20-30awg wire stripper
9 - helping hands
10 - Solid 20awg wire
11 - Solid 26awg wire
12 - Rosin Core Solder (I used .032" diameter solder)

Only things I bought to re-do all my lights was the SMD resistors, 20-30awg wire strippers, the tweezers, and the solid wire

 
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Thanks for the ideas everybody, I did the dash led conversion with red led's, painted my ac vents glossy red(which looks really cool because my lights in the car make them shine), im contemplating doing the led's in the vents. I'll put some pictures up tomorrow to show the end result.

 
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How long did the conversion take you? When I did mine with the SMD LEDs, it took me a hella long time because the ****'s really small..

and I was about to say "pics or it never happened" but you already said you were gonna post some up tomorrow

 
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By dash conversion I meant I replaced the bulbs in my climate control ***** with red led's. I found some at radioshack with built in resistors and they fit in the hole fairly well. I forgot about the pics last night so once it gets dark ill put some pics up.

 
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Cool. I converted all the bulbs myself and it definitely took me the better part of 4 hours.. lol..