Improving Armrest Cubby Lighting

[whitenemesis]

The "glow-worm" that attempts to illuminate the storage compartment under the centre armrest in my CLS is seriously inadequate. Trying to see anything in there at night is nigh on impossible!

I pulled the fitting out only to find it's some sort of LED or light guide. There is no bulb.

Has anyone ever changed this for something (LED probably) more illuminating?

 

[Ted]

I had this in my clk. Gloworm doesn't begin to describe how feeble and useless it is.
I didn't do anything about it, but I am pretty sure that you could put a brighter led in there without too much trouble.

I don't know if this is just a dim led, or if the voltage is reduced, but leds are cheap enough to let you mess around - try Maplins.

Couple of things to remember. Never wire in an led without a series resistor unless it alrady has one built in.
Leds are polarity sensitive - make sure that it is connected so that the led is forward biased - shouldn't damage it if you connect it the wrong way round.
A suitable resistor should you need one would be around between 470 ohms to 1k. quarter watt would be fine.
It should be safe to connect the led (with appropriate resistor) across the existing led for the purpose of testing.

 

[whitenemesis]

Thanks Ted. Will have a look at Maplins.

There's not much room to fiddle in there, hopefully there's a bit more give in the cabling

 

[Ted]

That was one of the reasons I didn't do anything with mine