The clocks have gone back and we’re now taking the dog out for walks in the dark. Although the JDMny has a rear interior light – more than some UK Jimnys get – the T10 bulb isn’t quite up to illuminating a boot full of dog + paraphernalia too well, so I decided to test out some LED replacements.

It’s important to note a couple of limitations from the off – firstly, I’m not a big fan of the “cool white” LED replacements and much prefer the traditional-looking “warm white” versions; the market would suggest that I’m swimming against the tide on that so bear in mind that there’s almost certainly a greater number and type of replacements in “cool white” (or sometimes just “white”) than there are in “warm white”. Secondly, the cabin festoon bulb (we don’t want a colour mismatch after all!) is very short – only 28mm long – and the housing in which it sits doesn’t offer much space for LED panels or certain configurations of LED festoon. At least the boot housing is more spacious…

In the rear I was able to fit a 59x40mm 48x1210SMD panel in “warm white” (3000-3500K) without much hassle, and for less than £3. At 3w it consumes 2w less than the T10 but pushes out a significant amount more light: the shots below were taken with identical ISO, shutter & aperture settings.

The cabin festoon replacement was a lot more tricky, especially with the restriction of using a matching “warm white” LED. In the end I had to settle on a 31mm 4x5050SMD festoon which was still a tight fit on both length and width despite being the smallest I could find in that type of fitment. I believe there’s a good chance that two very small panels could be squeezed in either side of the central switch/bulb holder, but unfortunately those small LED panels are only available in the standard “white” (at least from UK sellers), so I’ll have to leave that for someone else to investigate. At 0.8w the LED festoon consumes a massive 7.2w less than the standard bulb, yet still manages to push out slightly more light than before.