I am trying to remove the door sills in order to light up the word Ranger. This mod is inspired by the new option on the Mini Cooper to have illuminated door sills.

If any one knows how to remove these please let me know.

 

Look up under them (from underneath the truck) and I believe that they just snap on and off, you should be able to see it from there.. cool mod, how do you plan on gettin it to light up?

 

They just snap into place with 4~5 plastic pins. Easy to remove. I take mine off once or twice a year to clean and wax under them.

 

Going to do this one by removing the center of the lettering and replacing with either lexan or break resistant glass inserts and frosting them by either sandblasting or sanding directly. Then back lighting with an LED array. I think that I am going to go with a blueish color to match the display on my stereo.

Going to start the real work on this one as soon as I finish my aluminium mounting kit to replace the cheap plastic one.

Also if N3elz or anyone knows how to tap the door ajar sensor/where the wires run for it, let me know so that I can hook this into the sensor so that the lights are only on when the door is open, but still work when the vehicle is key out and power off.

 

pop em up with a screwdriver, if you go muddin you should clean under there often, here is mine

 

I think after seeing pictures of what can get underneath the sill, I am going to make sure that I add a rubber gasket strip to the outside edge. Also definitely going to make sure that the whole lighting unit is watertight.

Thanks for the pics.

 

The biggest problem in not the outside edge. It is a hole or two that are open to the hollow rocker panel below. These holes (plus all of the mounting holes to a lesser extent) let lots of dirt and water thrown up by the tires get under the sill. Adding a gasket without sealing those holes will only hold more dirt and water in.

 

Good! I'm glad somebody answered that for you. I had no idea, lol.

 

John (n3elz), [or anyone else who knows for that matter] Where would you reccomend running the power from. It wont be a high current draw of course seeing as I am only running a handfull of LED's

Thinking about running them in parrallel so that if one seal fails and water ruins a circuit I only lose one LED resistor Pair.

Let me know your thoughts.


Thanks for the tips on sealing the holes for water prevention. This should help a bunch.

 

I emailed you back on this already -- you didn't get it?

Easy place to tap is the powerpoint or cigarette lighter connections. I presume you want these to light up even when the key isn't on?

If they are going to run with the dome light, you could just tap the dome light circuit.

I wasn't sure exactly what sill lights do or where they go.

You should probably fuse the tap you make with a 1 amp fuse. Plenty of power for all your LED's, and then you can use a thinner wire to make routing easier. Regardless, branch fusing it is a good idea.

 

Didnt see the email, but I have about 8 email addresses so I dont always notice all of my mail.

Thanks for the reply.

For your Info. The lights will be in the middle of the word ranger in the door sill. I will be cutting the center out of the word Ranger and replacing the missing portion with sandblasted Lexan (I think Lexan at this point) and then illumintaing that from behind/underneath.


This is the inspiration for the mod. There was a much better picture of it, but I cant find it now.