Dude, thank you... You saved me about $400 bucks...
... and... stupid question... but who the heck would I look up to help install this kinda thing? Is there a certain kind of garage that specializes in customizations? what would I search for? Im such a noob to this kind of thing.
We don't need no $tinking garage$. All my modding is being done in my own shop/garage/driveway... and the hard stuff in the Target parking lot at the NorCal Scions Wednesday night meet. Seriously find your local Scion street modding club. They're a blast and infinitely valuable friends to have for this sort of trouble.
You bought a Lego car. Scions are seriously engineered for amateur modding, the iQ even moreso than previous models. Don't believe me? Go open your back hatch, reach up, grab the plastic panel on the inside of your hatch and give it a good tug straight down. There are 8 or so plastic pop-tabs holding it on. It'll snap off with a few good yanks, and snap on with a few good fist-bumps.
Now realize the entire car interior is put together like that. Towards the front its a bit more complicated but basically the weather stripping around the door is holding everything that's not pop-tabbed on. The weather stripping itself can be pulled off and pressed on too. Easiest part is the door sill cover: it pops off with a good tug. Just go slow, look carefully (like the yellow hooks under the A column need to be twisted out of their slots and back in again), and that's all there is to it.
The only thing you need tools to remove are the seat belts and the seats themselves. A socket wrench and a screwdriver will do.
Getting the interior apart and back together again is a parking-lot mod. You just need a couple'a friends and a couple of hours. That's a third of your interior lighting project.
Another third is designing your custom kit. E-bay should get you a string of 100 or so LED's for around $50, with a color controller. Consider the local hardware store for interesting re-purposed parts (like the afore-mentioned kitchen drawer pulls re-purposed as LED sconces). Design, layout and purchase together are another third of the project. I'm budgeting about $100 for this project all together. I also have a lot of experience in soldering my own wiring harness kits together (all them robot projects back in school), so that part doesn't scare me.
The last third is placing the controller, and tapping the wiring harness for power. You'll at least need a good multimeter and soldering experience. Can't help you there...yet. I'll be headed this way over the summer (after a few vinyl projects). I'll let you know how it goes.
Seriously: local Scion club. There's just no comparison between paying a shop to do it and having done it yourself with a few friend's help. Shops may do it a touch cleaner, but their imaginations (and parts catalogs) are just so limited. My club's forums, Home Depot, computer recyclers, E-Bay, and Craig's List are my parts catalog now. Having personally littered on the Moon I can say the sky is definitely not the modding limit.
