About the compartment below the A/C *****...anyone know how I can make the light in there turn on when I open it? Instead of it turning on when the car doors open...

I know that in my friends 04 XA it turns on when he opens it and in my 06 XA it only turns on when I open my car door.

 

Well there is no electrical switch that connects to the little door so your friend probably installed his own. You could install a switch in it but it seem like a lot of work and I'm not sure how you would mount the switch. You could just wire it up like me and have it turn on with the headlights. (makes for a cool effect at night)

 

Nope no mods done to the 04 XA...nice pics...where did you get the cig light?

 

Sanchez,

How did you wire the box lights to the headlight switch? Thanks!

 

Got it at autozone, its a blue skull, not realy into skulls but it was the only one with a blue light in it. Surprised to hear about your friend's xA being able to naturally do that, was it pre-owned maybe? I have 06 xa so i don't know too much about the older models.

I'm sure there are is a much better way to do this than how I did but Ill tell you how I did it. First I ran a wire from the power source mentioned in this post https://www.scionlife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=35257 to the cubby area(its like 2ft and you hide the wire under the carpet). then you cut the normal wires going to the bulb and wire up it to your new power source. As mentioned in the above post it will turn on with the headlights and is controled by the dimmer switch. I know I'm not being very descriptive here but if your seriously considering doing this then I could go take a few pics and do a better write up.

 

i think i got the technique down, thanks! All I have left to ask is what kind of wire did you use?

 

The wire I used was 16 gauge speaker, but thats because it was just laying around. Its a small bulb and doesn't draw a lot of power(even less if you replaced it with an LED). I think you can use a small 18 gauge wire and it would be fine. Also on the whole speaker wire vs. electrical wire thing, its all copper in the middle so if you have some left over speaker wire, i say use it. I forgot to tell you that you can also put an LED in that second cubby at the bottom and power it off the same source, I put a multi-colored one in mine and it looks nice. Just somthing to think about.