D.I.Y Headlights and crawling lights for cheap!!

[EightFootJezuz]

So i made my own headlights and rear crawling lights today they turned out great and really lights up the darkness on my Nissan Titan. If you want to make your own I will explain how for under $10

You will need (4) white l.e.d's, (2) 100ohm resistors, (2) light buckets, 22-24 awg or smaller wire, 9 volt battery, soldering iron and heat shrink tubing. I used strong Velcro to mount the rear lights and used self adhesive zip tie anchors to run the wire and black Gaff tape to conceal the wires

You can get everything you need at your local Radioshack. The l.e.d's are around $2.50 for a pack of 2, the chrome light buckets are $1.50 fora pack of 2, the resistors are $.99 for a pack of 5 and the wire i just went to Harbor Freight Tools and got some 24awg test wires and cut the alligator clips off and had about 12 feet of wire for $2.50, you can get the l.e.d's and resistors for about $.15 each from PartsExpress if you can wait and dont want to spend the extra $ at Radioshack

You need to solder the wire to the l.e.d and solder the 2 resistors to the positive side of 2 l.e.d's (see pic below), then shrink tube the wires at the solder joints and run the wire how you would like. I also used shrink tube to hold the front lights in the buckets tighter, its simple if you know how to solder and they look great at night!

Here are the 100 ohm resistors and an l.e.d. for an example. The short l.e.d post is the negative side and the longer one is the positive side





Here's a simple wiring diagram to show where the resistors go and how to wire it in series for those of you who don't know.



Here's the headlights installed in the light buckets




Here's the rear lights Velcro'd



Here's how the headlights look







Here you can see the rear lights

[NVUS]

hella yeah! im just waiting for my new custom tundra truggy to get made and shipped but i wanna do hella lights! i think the tundra hardbody even has light housings to mount some up in.

[Jer]

Looks good, I have been poking around looking to see what resistors I needed and you have solved the problem.

Isn't it a little weird we are all from salt lake in this post so far? haha

[team3six]

You know, if you can wait for a month, I will be selling 5mm and 3mm lights pre wired with resistors for up to 12v in just about every color you can think of and they come with 6" of pre soldered line too.

[Jer]

Originally Posted by team3six

You know, if you can wait for a month, I will be selling 5mm and 3mm lights pre wired with resistors for up to 12v in just about every color you can think of and they come with 6" of pre soldered line too.

Thanks for the plug, let us know

[EightFootJezuz]

yeah its real easy... here's a link to a easy to use wizard for finding resistor values... you just need the forward volts,MA, and voltage source (9v.AA,AAA,etc)


http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz