Kia Niro EV - Fix a lighting problem

welcome to evolution my name is Andre Lawrence and this is my channel about the transition from gas-powered cars to electric cars from the perspective of a first-time be the owner this is my 2019 Kia Niro Evy and if you watch my last video at the end I mentioned that there's a weak spot that's bothered me since I purchased it now since then I've looked into it a little bit it seems that not just my Niro Evy has the problem but pretty much all neros in general and it's something that's easy to solve if you want to know exactly what I bought and how I fixed it stick around and I'll let you know in 10 seconds if you follow my channel and you have seen me before then you'll know that this is not my usual style while being in self confinement for over a month close to a month and a half now and no access to a barber well you shave your head and figure what the heck you have nothing to lose so what is the problem with the Kia Niro Evie well even though this is the Canadian SX touring top trim which includes pretty much all LED lighting including headlights and interior lights and all that other good stuff it doesn't have reverse lights that are LED and I just don't get it so when this car backs up at night the fact that the reverse lights are low and small they're completely useless basically I'm backing up and there's light but you can't see much and this is a pet peeve that I've had with this car since the beginning and I found out that I'm not the only one with this problem other niro easy owners have complained and I saw in the Kia near Evy Canada Facebook group that someone purchased the bulbs that I purchased very recently and put them in their car and solved the problem now there were pictures of this and that was useful to me but I wanted to see does it really stand up to the price that they paid for the product now the luminix product is a product from an american company called diesel leds or diesel LEDs and they are expensive you can buy stuff on eBay for much less money but supposedly these are truly powerful and read up to their specs in terms of the number lumens that our output well we're about to find out because I'm gonna be swapping one light bulb I'm going to show you how to do that with the LEDs show you what I like and don't like about it because I did notice one thing when I purchased them and then give you my opinion as well as a view of what they look like old and new and then both new together now before I actually install these in my car I wanted to show you what it looks like when you receive the package the company like I said is called diesel LEDs and this is the box I received from USPS or Canada Post once it got to Canada inside you have the actual product in a little bit of bubble wrap for protection very standard little box these are the 921 - P White's I did contact the supplier and asked them specifically if this would fit the Kia Niro Evy 2019 and I'm guessing the same thing for the 2020 I'm pretty sure they didn't change the light bulb in the next model year so what do you have inside is the two light bulbs and some instructions the instructions are a one-page you know pull out the bulb stick these in and screw them in place the bulbs themselves are pretty high-quality based on the way they feel the way they look well know if they're any good once I've installed them but so far are there other reviews that I've seen are fairly decent they've got the connection that happens in the housing for the light and then the other end which actually connects to the connector or the light bulb usually sticks into we're gonna find out if these heat up or not but according to the manufacturer according to the supplier these are going to generate less heat than the actual light bulbs themselves so this shouldn't cause any issues one thing that I really don't like about these kinds of bulbs is that this is what connects into the light bulb connector in the car in the harness itself and then you jam that into the housing there's nothing to protect the actual connection it's just an open thing that plugs into the wire socket and I'm probably gonna end up by there putting heat shrink or electrical tape to cover this because I don't want any salt and crud to get in there and corrode the connectors and I don't want any water affecting this so let's install them and see what happens I'm not sure about other models of the Kia Nero but the Nero evie has a pretty close-up undercarriage underneath the rear of the car there is a plastic shield that protects the underneath of the bumper cover it's held in with a few nuts and some plastic pushpins in order to replace the reverse lights are going to need two tools you need a flathead screwdriver and a ten millimeter socket wrench there are seven little plastic pushpins that are in the rear edge of the cover here's where you stick in the flat-head screwdriver to pop the head down and there are six nuts that are on the back edge of the cover four in the center and then one on each side hidden up here now the seven pins that are in the back edge of the cover are made of plastic and the little head that's in the center pops downwards with the screwdriver and allows you to pull the entire retainer out just be sure to be gentle and pulled ahead of the pin out about 1/2 centimeter it should be enough to get the entire clip out from the bumper cover when I started to take the nuts out of the back edge I had used a shorter extension on my ratchet but as I did the first nut that was higher up I realized that my extension wasn't long enough it kept bumping into a bowl to sticking out of the suspension or a frame or whatever that is so I changed it out for a longer extension and then everything worked really well earlier I said there were seven retaining clips and six nuts holding in the cover but there are actually two little thumb screws that are in the center to allow the cover to stay up when you install it and remove it once you've got all the other retainers taken out these are just finger tighten so you don't need any tools to remove them in order to get the bulb socket out of the housing you need to rotate it counterclockwise but the socket is 90 degrees and there's a little retention pin that prevents it from rotating to get the socket out you need to pull the cable off that's held in with a little clip you need to pinch the connector right here and pull the cable away from the socket and when I first started to try and pinch this clip out it was a little bit hard it seems to be quite stuck on so be sure to press until you hear it click and then you should be able to pull it backwards away from the bulb socket once you've done that then unless left is to rotate the socket itself to the left counterclockwise and then pull it downwards to get it out of the car I'm really unhappy with my GoPro because when I had taken out the bulb and set my bail prop in the trunk of my car to record me pulling out the bulb inserting the new LED and then taping it up with electrical tape to seal it well my GoPro decided to eat that so this is all you get to see are these three little images that I was able to salvage from what video I had sorry about that once you've got the LED connected to the bulb socket you need to reconnect the song head to the cars harness so let's start with that now you can't really tell from the angle that this camera has but the space to do this is really small and even though I don't have big hands I'm trying to film this and let you see what I'm doing while reconnecting the cable to the bulb socket with one and a half hands this guy couldn't really get both of my hands in there when inserting the LED into the opening it's important to note that there are three surfaces that actually light up there's the top portion that points straight up to the top of the housing and there's a front and a back so be sure when you insert the LED into the housing that you've got one of the main faces pointing back out of the car so that the light is brightest once I was done reconnecting the connectors together I made sure that the bulb was properly lined up with the rear of the car and then I chose to tuck the wire behind the other wire that's there for the reverse parking sensor so now let's look at it before and after then a combined view of before and after together like I said previously the original Nero evie reverse lights are pathetic as you can see here they're completely useless the luminix LED reverse lights on the other hand are incredible they are very bright and for the first time in one year of ownership I can actually see what I'm doing when I back up with my car at night to make sure you can see the actual difference here's a side-by-side comparison of the lights it really is incredible how drastic the difference is I really wish I would have done this modification when I first got my car it really is amazing so if you're on the fence of whether to upgrade the reverse lights on your car you shouldn't hesitate go and get these lights they're amazing before I get to my final words on the luminix LED reverse lights I wanted to say a giant thank you to everybody who has subscribed to my channel so far because even though I was away from YouTube for two months I still had channel growth and my channel is now over 2300 that's pretty amazing super happy thank you very much I've decided to get back to some older habits and give myself a new goal I'd like to get the 3000 subscribers as obviously soon possible so if you could help me out and show me that you like what I do by clicking the subscribe button and clicking the thumbs up because you'll like this video I would really appreciate it thank you very much one of the other things that I haven't done in a while is the t-shirt quiz now because of the pandemic and confinement stores are closed and I'm not able to go shopping at my usual place for a new t-shirt so I've decided to do something a little bit different let me get on my new t-shirt so here's the t-shirt I wanted to show you obviously it's my evolution channel t-shirt so that's not really what this quiz is gonna be it's a bit of a twist since I had to record this video over a period of several days I wore shirts on different days and the question is how many shirts that I wear during the making of this video including this t-shirt but excluding any bloopers that may be included at the end of the video if you're the first person to get the right answer as to how many shirts I wore during this video I'll mention your name in the next one now let me get back to my regular shirt like I said the number of shirts that I wear throughout this video does not include any bloopers that I may include at the end of the video so if you didn't count you'd have to head back and watch the video again and see how many times I changed so one of my final thoughts on the luminix LED reverse lights well I'll start by saying that they are amazing in terms of brightness the quality looks fantastic they're well packaged the communication from the supplier diesel LEDs is fantastic they respond almost immediately to my emails they answered all of my questions really quickly fantastic customer service the thing I don't like is the fact that the connector that goes into the bulb socket is exposed and you have to tape it up with electrical tape if you don't want water dust and add stuff to happen to that or for them to disconnect by themselves because you roll over a bump I wish they included some sort of rubber boot that would connect straight on to the bulb socket and seal it off already considering that these are fifty five US dollars plus nine dollars us for shipping that's something that I would have liked to seen considering that there are cheap alternatives out on the market it's up to you to decide if you're willing to spend that extra money I haven't tried the cheap Chinese products that are on eBay they may be good but these in my opinion are excellent with that being said be sure to stay tuned for my next video because summer is almost here I finally got the chance to have my new wheels but on my car and I'm gonna be making a video about what they look like on the car with and without the plastic inserts and try and get an idea of what the efficiency is because of the difference with the original wheels and these new wheels and if you were looking in the background you may see some pictures so if you have any questions comments or suggestions for future videos please put them in the comment section below and as always thanks for watching and I'll do the t-shirt portion so there you have it this is not actually the question about this so here's my t-shirt obviously it's my evolution channel website teachable and it seems that not just the Eevee version but all neurons have this little weak spot but I bought a problem Oh