Illuminate interior handles (How TO)

[Danny_R]

Not sure if I posted this in the right place. Admin forgive me if I have!

Thought I'd do a quick writeup for anyone wanting to undertake this Mod. I'm basically sick and tired of people making a big deal about locating the door handles at night so this should help.

Things needed:
x4 3mm LED's, (I chose green) with LED holders and 10 to 15v resistors.
heat shrink or electrical tape.
soldering iron and solder.
wire (I used red/black speaker wire).
x8 female spade connectors and x8 male spade connectors
crimpers
wire strippers
knife
philips screw driver.
You may want to have a multimeter or test light handy too.

Pictures speak a thousand words so here we go.













Lights come on with ignition and accessory. Being LED's, power draw should not be a problem. I've lots more mods to come so stay tuned!

Danny

[1990LTD]

Very cool man.


I just rigged up my cupholder console thing with switched led light strips on either side. This looks like a good idea because nobody can find my door handles EVER

[1990LTD]

This is probably a stupid question but why the resistors? Will me not using them inline with LEDs pose a problem?

[85crownHPP]

slick!!!
I love those little bezels... you can stick an LED almost anywhere with those.

[Danny_R]

The reason for having the resistors is because the LED's operate at around 3.7v dc. If you were to apply 12v directly to them, the LED would get super hot and burn out very quickly. The resistor takes anything from 10v to 15v dc and converts it into a nice 3.5v to keep the LED happy

Your strips will either already have resistors or they will be a calculated load meaning there's enough LED's on the strip to balance the load out.

[1990LTD]

Cool! Thanks for that.

Can you get ones rated for 12v?

[Danny_R]

No problem, you can buy 12v LED's but they usually come in the larger sizes like 9mm and up. They also cost more. Some of the US ebay sellers are great. If you write them and tell them you want x number of LED's with holders and resistors, they do all the work for you i.e. figure the resistors needed for the size led your purchasing.

I chose 3mm LED's because I didn't want them too bright. In fact if you ever want to dim an LED, double the resistors and it will halve the brightness.

Danny

[1990LTD]

Just found these pretty little things

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200471676404

[87gtVIC]

Nice job. I love how it looks.

[Heretic]

WOW That is a really good idea / mod. I have to get dimmer LEDs tho, the 5mm ones I have are all super bright white. Where did you get those little holders?

[Danny_R]

The holders came with the LED's. I got them off ebay. I was expecting the crappy black plastic holders but got these instead. I'll pm you the sellers store if you want?

[cadfan64]

They look great, please PM the seller, thanks!