I swear - along with the lack of hood struts the fact that there's no light circuit that activates when the hood is up is frankly mind-blowing. Hell, my wife's '99 tahoe with a ga-jillion miles on it has a bullet-proof light in the engine compartment, so when I'm forced to pull the intake in the pouring down rain to find out if I finally cracked the block due to overheating (only to find out the temp sensor is messed up) I can see what I'm doing.

Has anyone actually installed one, and if so what did you pick? No, I'm not cool with the string of LEDs that makes my hood look like a chandelier. I just need a simple light bulb with a shroud on it or something.

 

It’ll never put the light where you really need it. I carry one of those LED lamps that straps to your head in the glovebox of all my vehicles - even the one with an under hood light. Just a suggestion.

 

Many cars from the 60's, 70's, and 80's had a light like that. Simply mercury tilt switch inside. Just wire to the battery with an inline fuse. Of course ZGrand has a really good suggestion.

 

That's crazy! I've never thought about that. Guess my '06 never had one either. I do remember my past cars having one.

I think I just never thought about it because I mounted two fluorescent lights in my garage for the purpose of working under the hood, because I knew that the bulbs we never bright enough anyways.

With LED strips nowadays, you could almost line your hood with them without any issues.

 

You would think that in a 45K - 50K dollar car you would get a hood light, and some real hood struts. Oh well, I guess it's a profit thing for Ford.

 

Cool - thanks all. In all seriousness I never go anywhere w/o one of these somewhere near my person:


Maybe I'll get an extra and put in the glove box. I was also thinking about the headlamp idea too 'cause holding a light in your mouth gets really old after a while.

If I find something better I'll post it here.

 

Never had a hood light that was worth a darn, always used a 100 watt clamp on light.

 

I wired a bunch of LED lights to a mercury switch, right to the battery. I mounted the mercury switch to the hood so when I open it, the lights turn on. When its closed, the lights turn off.

Got a 1-amp mercury switch and LED lights from ebay.

 

You can use a mercury-switch-activated hood light from a '95 Mustang, apparently still available on Amazon:

https://amzn.to/2q1azqn