***This method can also be used to make your own interior LED strips for under your dash and seats***
Also im gonna warn you guys in advance, sorry if some of the pics are crap, b/c my digi cam is like a million years old (3.0 megapix) and doesnt come out with very good quality pics.
How-to: Make a Home Made Wheel Well “LED Strips”
Tools you will need: Soldering iron and solder, Wire cutters, any gauge wire (I used 18 gauge wire for this), drill and a 13/64 bit, dremel, a 9v battery, silicone, aquatic tubing (or any kind of rubber tubing), and a piece of scrap wood.
Step 1: What you want to do is take the scrap wood and mark on it how long your tube is going to be and where the LED’s will be placed. For this example, each tube was 18” long with 1.5” between each LED of the same color (because I had used 2 different colors, blue and green).
Step 2: Take your rubber tubing and cut it in half only on one side. Then what you want to do is lay it down on the wood where you have marked and neither nail, or screw it down to the wood so that it looks like your dissecting a worm. After this, take your trusty drill and bit and start drilling the markings where your LED’s will be placed for when you’re working on the wiring.
Step 3: Now that we have our little holes, cut down the LED leads as short as you can but still be able to work on them.
Then solder the resistors on it them, after that go ahead and start sticking those LED’s in there little holes you drilled. It was easier to work on one color at a time if you wanting to do multiple colors. When the wiring was done stick the other color LED’s in and do the same to that color as you did before.
Step 4: Ok, now for the fun part, wiring the LED’s. What I did was connect all the positive leads to one mass power wire where they will be connected to a 12v power source when you install them, and did the same for the negative leads. Make sure you use different mass wire if your using multiple colors so that when you hit one switch you don’t light up ALL your LED’s but this does not matter for the ground wire because, lol well it’s a ground wire.
A little more in depth as to how I did this is I cut the wire and stripped it where the lead is going to be soldered onto and wrapped the lead around that bare wire and soldered it back together and did that till all leads were on the same mass positive wire. This method was one that I found worked for me but if your wanting to experiment to try and make this go along faster then by all means and go ahead and post up what worked for you for extra tips on this guide.
Also, I did the same with the negative leads but every time I stripped the wire I just connected 2 leads to that bare wire so that way this part moves along a little faster.
Step 5: After you are done wiring all the leads to there respective mass wire (I bet at this point your thinking “I hate wire and I don’t ever want to do that again” well guess what…..you got 3 more to do so HA!) you want to take either silicone or hot glue (used hot glue but I suggest using silicone and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to use a caulking gun if you have one handy) and glue or silicone in between the positive and negative leads at the base of the LED. This does 2 things for you, 1 – it holds the LED down to the bottom of the tube so that it cannot move as easily and 2 – it prevents the leads from touching each other making the LED go poof! Once the glue or silicone is dry, go ahead and remove the nails or screws and CARFULLY pull the tube from the board. What I did before I glued down the LED’s is I used my trusty 9v battery to make sure all the LED’s are in working order and of course, fix any problems that might occur.
This is what it should look like when wired completely but without the glue at the base of the LED’s
Step 6: Ok here is where it gets messy. Now its time to seal these bad boys up so that when they go in the wheel well, no moisture gets inside. For anyone that has cleared corners, they would know how to do this very well. Here is what I did for this part, take some more of your rubber tubing and cut it in half again except do it on the bottom where it curves, the pic here will show you what I mean.
After that, wrap the tubing around the top where the wiring is exposed.
Once that’s done, take your silicone and go under the lip of the tube you had just put on and start sealing it up on the inside.
Once this is done, it’s a good idea to put some more silicone over the edge so that it ensures the seal is solid.
Now what I did for the ends of the tube is I used some plugs that fit the tube and silicone the threading and stuck it in there and used a crap load of silicone again to make sure it’s sealed properly.
Also what I did with the end that has the wires coming out is I drilled a hole on the plugs big enough to fit all 3 wires through and silicone it up (ya I know……lots of silicone to be used).
Once this is all done, just go through the tube really quick and see if you can spot any potential leaks that might occur while the tubes are in those wheel wells. If there is, of course, whip out the trusty silicone and seal her up. Once you have verified that everything looks good, make sure to use your dremel and flatten the top of each LED so that the light will spread evenly or else you will have big dots on your wheel and that will just little goofy!
This method can also be used to make your interior lights as well for under your dash or even under your front seats for some lighting in the back; just not as much if ANY silicone will be used, only to hold the LED’s to the bottom on the tube. Now as for installation, this part is entirely up to you as to how you want to execute this. I just simply ran the wires through the steering wheel column (or anywhere in the firewall that will lead to your center console) and into my center console where I spliced and power and ground wires from the cigarette lighter to a switch that I can control on the inside of my car.
Heres the finished product of my wheel wells (and yes i will be lowering my car!!) Hope this helped guys. HAPPY MODDING!!!
this one is with both green and blue lights on
