In the rays of neon ... [ARTICLE] - Toyota Carina ED, 2.0 L, 1994

The idea to "light up" your car appeared long ago. Moreover, working with highlighting everything and everyone was not a novelty: since 2003, he was seriously fond of such a phenomenon as modding:
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There is a car, but it is dark in it. There are a great many ways to fix this, but we will not go the old old-fashioned way, and we will not hang Ilyich's light bulb in the salon =) LED backlights are not bad, but they are extremely unreliable. The choice of a real Jedi - neon! =)

What follows is an untranslatable pun using local idiomatic expressions (©):

The phenomenon of "luminescence", also known as "cold glow" is based on the glow of certain substances, excess over their thermal radiation at a given temperature and excited by some source of energy (occurs under the action of light, radioactive and X-ray radiation, an electric field, with a chemical reactions and mechanical stress). Based on this phenomenon, some especially gifted individuals have created many different light sources, such as:

fluorescent lamps
LEDs
gas - discharge light sources

And thanks to this very phenomenon, our experimental will shine like a New Year tree. All of the above
light sources can be used to illuminate the interior and exterior of a car, but the most acceptable for us is a kind of low pressure gas-discharge light source - a neon lamp. Since it most fully combines the parameters that we described above for the lighting device (the diodes are still rather weak and, in order to get decent illumination, you need a lot of them, and fluorescent lamps are heated and produced, as a rule, only in white, and this, you see, is not gut).

In a neon lamp, radiation in the optical range occurs during an electric discharge in a neon atmosphere. The most commonly produced neon lamps are glow discharge signal neon lamps, which use the orange-red glow of the near-cathode discharge regions. The lamps are filled with neon-helium mixture. In order to reduce the ignition voltage, a small amount of argon is introduced into the gas mixture, and the cathode surface is covered with a thin layer of an activating substance.

But for our purposes, neon advertising tubes with a cold cathode (gas light tubes), which use the glow of a positive column of a glow discharge, are more suitable. These tubes can be bent and given any shape, which is why they became attractive to us in comparison with neon tubes with a simple cathode. But with all this there is one drawback - it is a monotonous glow of the same red-orange color. But I would like to illuminate in such a way that the rainbow would be envious. And here such a phenomenon as the imposition of two colors on each other comes to the rescue, which is widely used by artists. One neon lamp combines two types of luminescence: luminescence in gases (neon-helium mixture plus argon for the accelerator) and in solids - luminophores, which cover the inner surface of the lamp (gas tube).

Actually, the color of the light (I'm sorry) will depend on what kind of phosphor the lamp is covered with from the inside.

So let's get started. As part of the kit, there are actually lamps and an inverter block for converting automobile 12 volts into several thousand, vital for lamp operation. I stopped at a three-lamp scheme: one large one illuminates the luggage compartment, two - into the salon under the seats.
We open the trunk, recline the seats. There are a lot of mounting options here, I fixed the lamp and the block with steel brackets and technological holes in the body.

Fixing the lamp and inverter under the rear shelf

It was decided to connect to the ashtray lighting connector (it turns out I have one! =))
Removing the central tunnel

Since the lamps on their tail have a "dyvakonets" type connector, with a slight movement of the hand we change it to a molex, which can be obtained from any computer in incredible quantities.
The same molex

We stretch an impromptu "braid" through thorns to the stars, that is, to the area of ​​the handbrake handle.

Add another one to the backlight connector.

For the convenience of installing lamps in the cabin, we dismantle the seats. Vacuum at the same time)

It was decided to fix the lamps directly to the carpet with nylon ties.

We connect. Test Drive.

We assemble the central tunnel, fixing the inverter inside it, there is more than enough space.

Voila =)

I would like to thank my soul mate (Sweety) for the great gift for February 23rd, and Ilya (shvED-) for the quality products.

To be continued;)

best wishes.banshee
ED & EXIV CLUB NOVOSIBIRSK