Introduction: How to Make an LED Ready to Install Into a Car!

By The Resistor Netork

In this instructable, you will learn how to prep an LED to be ready to install into a car! This means adding a resistor and soldering on some leads. When you are finished, you can do so many things with them and save a few bux too.



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Step 1: Get Your Supplies

You will need wire, an LED and a 560 ohm 1/4 watt resistor.

Step 2: Solder the Resistor

For this step, you will solder the resistor to the longer LED lead, or the anode. This is the positive. The resistor is needed to ensure that the LED only gets 2.5 volts and 20 ma from your cars electrical system.

You will want to trim down the LED and resistors leg so that you don't have a large area of flimsy solder terminals.

When you are finished soldering, slide some shrink tube over the resistor to prevent a short.

Step 3: Solder on Some Leads

Solder on some wire. Make it as long as you want. Use a 18 to 24 gauge wire.

Make sure that you use shrink tube to cover these connections as well. This is also very important.

Also, make sure that you have some indication of positive and negative. I used blue as positive (its all I had on hand) and brown as negative.

Step 4: Install!

Drill some 5mm holes in your car where you would like to mount your LED and run the wires to a switched power source.

Some cars have a switched cigarette socket. In some cars (my case) i borrowed the switched wire from behind the radio. The radio turns off when you shut off the car and the LEDs do the same. If you want to be professional, you could find a blank fuse area and tie in. I opted not to do this...