Sp8Ball’s Mod Thread (Stealing Other Poster’s Ideas Since Mid-2010)

[sp8ball]

Modification: Interior Door Handle LEDs, cont.

Here is the top of the interior door handle assembly. See that groove/slit just above Antman’s thumb? In the Limited, that’s the slit through which light cascades down onto the handle. This is where we’re going to drill our hole for our LED.



Here’s the plastic piece at the rear of the assembly, that also covers one of the three screws that you have to remove to take off the door panel. Have it handy, because your hole will need to be placed in such a way that it doesn’t interfere with the installation and seating of this piece back into its original location.



To seat our particular LED correctly, we need a 13/64 hole.



Drill the hole in the top of the door handle assembly, taking care about alignment and location. Don’t get it too close to the slit – or you will cause the LED to seat funny, and may crack the piece. Having the hole too close to the rear of the assembly may also interfere with the installation of the cover piece (shown two pictures earlier).




Insert the LED into the hole.



Looking inside the door handle assembly, look to see if there’s any excess/binded plastic that needs to be removed. We removed ours by gently cutting it away.



Installed and cleaned up!

 

[sp8ball]

Modification: Interior Door Handle LEDs, cont.

Perform a fit test with the aforementioned rear cover plate to make sure it will install and seat around/under the LED.




Now, on to the wiring! Fun!!

Take your wiring harness and isolate the purple wire and white/black-stripe wire. Then, cut these two wires.




In our set up, the yellow wire was power/positive, and the yellow/black-stripe was negative. These went with the purple and white/black-stripe, respectively. Add some solder to both ends of the cut wires, make the connections, and heat wrap them together for excellence.

 

[sp8ball]

Modification: Interior Door Handle LEDs, cont.

Replace the door handle assembly in its location on the door panel.



Replace the four(?) screws removed during the removal of the assembly.




In the two locations where we cut out the plastic from the plastic welds, we elected to insert two self-tapping, SHORT screws into the soft plastic. This helps secure the door handle assembly, but also serves to tighten the whole assembly down to prevent the “gapping” we showed in the earlier picture.




Plug the wiring harness back into the door plug



Turn on the car and test the LED. Because these lights are tapped into the controls that turn the window up/down button lights on, they should come on with the ignition. We recommend doing this BEFORE you reassemble the door, so you can easily gain access to the area again if it doesn’t work!



Once reinstalled, the final product should look like this:

NEED NEW PIC OF FINAL PRODUCT, since the one I have showed the big gap that I had to fix! (I will edit this post and insert the pic tonight)

 

[sp8ball]

Modification: Cupholder LEDs

Three LED lights (see previous post about making LEDs), some speaker wire, and steady hands: About $10.

Difficulty Scale (1 to 10): Five, because you have to get into console area, remove some pieces for modification, drilling, etc.

Sp8ball’s Personal Intimidation Factor (1 to 10): Two, because Antman was helping and he had already done it. (Rose to a 9 when we were using a soldering iron and butane torch around my cloth seats…)

Install Time: 1 hour

Reason for Doing It: To give the interior yet another nice lighting touch. Helps define the black cupholders at night.

Benefit: Good, subtle lighting at a very reasonable price.

Cons: Getting to the pieces.

Other Products Considered: None.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________

The third and final mod undertaken during the Antman/Sp8ball Mod Party and Family BBQ, this is another “Antman Original”. I can’t emphasize how cool it is to have someone literally right around the corner who has the balls to do these mods on his own, so I can just ride his coat-tails, have him teach them to me, and get these killer results with little stress. I just hope that anyone undertaking these mods finds these write-ups to be half as helpful and informative as it is to have a personal Antman.

(enough of that! – sounds like some weird man-crush or Antman fetish)

On to the final mod…the cupholder LEDs.

Now, when I first heard about these – and saw that you had to (SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!) drill into the rubber cupholder inserts to make it work, I was hesitant, and just about convinced myself not to do it. But once I saw them in Antman’s truck, I was sold.

First things first…you have to get to the underside of the cupholders!

Remove your shift knobs. These are removed by simply unscrewing them.



Then you’re going to place your fingers under one corner of the center shifter console cover, and another inside the “well” that houses your 4WD shifter.



Pull up on it with a decent (but not gorilla-like) amount of force to pop the clips. Don’t pull too hard/high, because there’s a wiring harness still connected to the truck.



Unclip the wiring harness by pushing on the clip and separating them.



The center shifter area of your truck will look naked, like C3PO in “The Phantom Menace”.




Unwrap the wire bundle.

 

[sp8ball]

Modification: Cupholder LEDs, cont.

See the green wire in the upper right hand corner? (there’s actually two of them, but we just need one) That’s the one we’re going to cut into, along with the white/black-stripe.




Take your wire from your LEDs (our striped wire was negative), and connect up with the wires from the 4Runner, bringing all three wires together. {Note: By getting tied into these wires, the cupholder LEDs are going to be on whenever your lights are on, not all the time like the door handle LEDs}




Heat shrink wrap to secure and protect the connection. BE CAREFUL!! This has to be done inside the truck, so you’re doing this near your seats!



Reapply fabric wire bundle holder and tape to wires.




This completes the “inside the truck work”, for now, and we can start to work on the center console pieces and cupholders on the workbench.

 

[sp8ball]

Modification: Cupholder LEDs, cont.

Tape off the top of the center shifter console, since it’s that silver stuff that scratches easily. GENTLY cut out a hole for the cupholder and pull out the rubber insert.





There’s two clips that hold these wires in place. We’re showing the wiring free of the clips here, with the clips next to the spots where they were once held.



Remove the six screws around the cupholder assembly that mounts it to the center console piece.



Remove the cupholder and rectangular tray.



We used mounting clips and rings to secure our LEDs in this application. (Didn’t need them on the door because of the way they were mounted)



To mount these clips, we need to snap them into a ¼” hole…

 

[sp8ball]

Modification: Cupholder LEDs, cont.

Drill a pilot hole into the cupholder. Recommend that this hole be in the rear (as it sits in the car) and centered for the best looking setup. Also, you want to make sure it isn’t too close to the BOTTOM of the cupholder for two reasons. (1) So it doesn’t get covered up by the bottom of the rubber insert, and (2) so if there’s a small liquid spill in the cupholder – from condensation or whatever – it won’t flood the hole location.



Now insert the rubber insert into the cupholder, and drill a pilot hole into it, using the pilot hole in the plastic shell as the guide. This will index the hole.



Unlucky! When we drilled the pilot hole into the rubber insert, we hit one of the rubber ribs! No worries, we’ll just cut that rib away (we’ll need to get rid of it to make room for the LED anyway).




Now drill your ¼” hole into the plastic shell of the cupholder, using the pilot hole as a guide (naturally).



Clean and de-burr the edges of the hole to allow the LED clip to seat cleanly.



Insert the LED clip.

 

[sp8ball]

Modification: Cupholder LEDs, cont.

Seat the LED in the clip.




Drill the hole out of the rubber insert. NOTE: You can go one size smaller in drill bit size, as the rubber insert will only see the tip of the LED. You may also want to taper the opening of the hole to encourage light to pour out, rather than being “spotlighted” out of the hole.



Clean up the edge of the hole. This is important, because this is the hole people will see! (ya know, if they take a close look at your cupholders and stuff)




Fit test the Rubber insert over the LED.

 

[sp8ball]

Modification: Cupholder LEDs, cont.

Pry the rubber insert from the bottom of the rectangular tray. (note: Mrs. Sp8ball used my truck to run errands last week when I rode my motorcycle to work…and this tray has three discarded gum wrappers and two (wrapped) peppermints in it now. Grrr…)



Drill a hole in the back of the rectangular tray. Again, this can be tricky because of the angle, but try to get it high enough that the LED won’t hit the rubber insert when it’s reinstalled.



Insert clip to hold LED.



Insert LED. You need to carefully maneuver and push the LED into the clip without breaking the wires. The long, thin, stiff connectors coming off of the LED will bend if you’re gentle, so you can make this “turn”.



**DO THE CUPHOLDER BY THE 4WD SHIFTER THE SAME WAY YOU DID THE OTHER ROUND CUPHOLDER!**

Things should look like this when all the LEDs are installed. We have soldered all three wires from the three LEDs together to prepare them for mating with the vehicle. You’ll see we used thick gauge speaker wire from the LEDs…but when you put three of them together and then try to use solder…it sucks. Soaks up a ton of solder.




We opted to wire a quick-disconnect type fitting to those three LED wires, so that if we had to remove the center shifter console in the future, we wouldn’t be faced with a situation where we disconnected the original wiring harness, but had these LED wires still connected, which would stop us from removing the center console completely. This way, we can disconnect the original harness AND this new connection, allowing us to completely remove the center shifter console (the way Toyota intended!).




Remove the blue protective tape from the console, plug the electrical connections back together, snap the center console back in place, and replace your shift knobs…and you’re done!

 

[sp8ball]

Modification: Cupholder LEDs, cont.

Here’s what they look like after installation. You can see the one in the rectangular tray is exposed, but the one in the round cupholder is not…because of the rubber insert in the round cupholder.

 

[1engineer]

Very good! Hopefully your job is in documentation and organization because if it is, you will go far! You two (you and Antman) make a good team. I probably will not do any of your mods to my 4Runner but I will refer to this thread when I need info on interior parts removal such as door panels and console and also the light bulb replacement. Since this thread now has 31 pages it might be nice to start another thread with the first post listing and linking all of your mods in sequence. Just a thought or maybe modify your first post in this thread to include links. Again great job.

 

[Johnny Utah]

I took my lady out to dinner last friday, (Uncle Julios Rio Grand) We finished dinner, had a lovely time by the way, so as i'm pulling out of my spot, there is this salsa red T4R waiting to grab my spot. The first thought that came to my mind when i looked in the rear view mirror was, "Oh, i guess sp8ball made the drive down to northern virginia and is here and is going to the Rio Grand Cafe too"

hahaha




:trophy:

 

[sp8ball]

I took my lady out to dinner last friday, (Uncle Julios Rio Grand) We finished dinner, had a lovely time by the way, so as i'm pulling out of my spot, there is this salsa red T4R waiting to grab my spot. The first thought that came to my mind when i looked in the rear view mirror was, "Oh, i guess sp8ball made the drive down to northern virginia and is here and is going to the Rio Grand Cafe too"

hahaha




:trophy:

Did you look at the antenna? ALWAYS look at the antenna!

 

[beamer4prez]

Did you look at the antenna? ALWAYS look at the antenna!

LMAO. so very true :lmao:

 

[Ni1522ke]

Thats...

Did you look at the antenna? ALWAYS look at the antenna!

Thats what she said... :gun6:

 

[hrothgar02]

After reading all of these responses to the question, I think I am throwing mine on the market too. I would rather get Reata all dolled up and ready for a little camping anyways.

Thanks to all of you,

I'm a little late to this conversation, but I did the exact same thing. I was a motorcycle nut, devouring magazines and planning trips. Once my son was born, I lost all interest. I was riding and the thought of getting hit and never seeing my family again was the nail in the coffin. I left the bike on the centerstand (BMW R1150R) for 2 years and finally donated it to a good cause (silent auction). I have no desire to ride or get the itch even if I see a Ducati or another BMW.

 

[tkeratt]

So I will have to keep my eyes open for you - I am about 2 minutes away from that shopping center- we should all have get-together at Costal Flats...Still trying to find a stubby antenna...

 

[Dadstoy]

I love reading this post!! I will also do the rear camera switch and some other things that you posted. I just wanted to say thank for you step by step post. Keep up the good work! By the way, I saw in your older post that a few people from the forum live around you. You made a comment about a getting together. If you guys decide to meet up let me know. I live in Wilmington,De About 2 hours from Baltimore. Like you said it would be a good picture.
Thanks again!

 

[sp8ball]

I love reading this post!! I will also do the rear camera switch and some other things that you posted. I just wanted to say thank for you step by step post. Keep up the good work! By the way, I saw in your older post that a few people from the forum live around you. You made a comment about a getting together. If you guys decide to meet up let me know. I live in Wilmington,De About 2 hours from Baltimore. Like you said it would be a good picture.
Thanks again!

Yeah - I would love to do that. Antman lives - literally - a mile and a half away from me. I could jog to his house (and probably should).

If you guys can't tell already, it's been a rough two weeks. Baby stuff, baseball season kicking off (for the 7 year old), work's been crazy, just spent 3 days in Utah, grad school and the subsequent commencement last weekend (though I'm not officially finished for another month), Mrs. Sp8ball's grad school work...UGH!

I haven't even seen Antman in a couple of weeks! (don't worry...we text)

But...we're hitting a smoother patch.

I believe Antman will be getting together with Mrs. Sp8ball and I tomorrow to walk her through the Kappa Speaker install. Then he and I will take on the 12v-always-on switch in the near future, and install his Gobi rack next weekend! So...we are coming out of the dark soon enough.

And that MAY allow us an opportunity to facilitate a discussion about a get-together. I say "facilitate" because I have no idea how to put one of those together.

Just don't schedule anything for next weekend...I have NKOTBSB tickets. :repuke:

One other thing...

Over the last two weeks, Mrs. Sp8ball has said:

"Is there a way to make it louder?" (after driving it the day I took my motorcycle to work)...and inquired about how much a new Magnaflow would cost.

"No...you don't need to get rid of it. I kinda like it. Just limit how much you ride it." (about the motorcycle, when I told her I was going to sell it)

"You need a black roof rack since you got rid of all the other chrome." (today...and then listened when I told her about the BajaRack I want)

"I'm glad you changed the door handles - it was the best thing you've done to make it look more manly." (note: she WAS pro-chrome)

"Why do you want me to do the speaker thing? Are you desperate for people to keep looking at your thread on that silly website? Are you going to ask me to be in a bikini? I'll do it, and you can put me on your thread - but I'm not going to be in a bikini. I just had a kid." (weird conversation that she started - and ended, without me saying a word - in the car today)

 

[Dadstoy]

Have fun at the show! My wife wants to go see NKOTB also. I just told her about the show. So I'm sure she will be looking for tickets. Keep me in mind about the get together. It would be nice to head south for the day. Definitely will find a sitter for the kids.

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