About to black the headlights out and add the audi...ish leds

[RoRo]

My idea might work it might not.

Well that solves everything..J/K

The LEDs only have a positive and negative wire coming from them.

[RoRo]

I bought this from the same website that sells the LEDs. It's a waterproof electronic LED driver. 12V 0.42A

Model WPS-12VDC-5W

I bought it because I hooked up the LEDS directly to the car battery and they stayed on all the time even when the car was off. So I figured I needed to buy a switch and a separate power supply so I can control when they turn on and off.

[daug1502]

I'm guessing superbrightleds.com? first thing that popped up in google was for landscape lighting. that's a power supply more akin to a laptop computer than a battery, and is what I was afraid of. You don't need that powersupply it's just a transformer. Be useful for testing LED's before putting them in your car, just wire it up to a 3 wire plug with a ground and some insulated gator clips on the other end.

Did you have the LED's hooked up with the switch the first time? If it didn't work get out a continuity tester and make sure the switch is actually good. The way you wired it the first time is right, the power just didn't get interrupted for some reason.

Note: the wiring method I mentioned earlier would be a way to save on wire. Just ground on the switch side instead of running a wire into the cab and back out to the lights.

[RoRo]

No, I didn't have the switch in that circuit the first time. I don't know why, but I thought if I hooked the LEDs up to the car battery, they would only come on when the car was turned on. So when they stayed on, I knew I needed some kind of switch. I just don't know how to incorporate a switch into all of this. LEDs ----- switch and then switch ------ car battery???

Do I pretty much have a $10 paper weight now with this LED driver or what? Can I still use it in my set-up?

I've got 3 days off work and have plenty of time to do the drilling, removing of dash etc.. to do this the right way now.

Thanks for answering all my questions. I appreciate your time.

[daug1502]

The Driver is useless sorry.

You have options on wiring and Don't have to wire back to the battery, the ground just attaches to the frame/body of the car so that's a great ground site. If you prefer the batter that doesn't hurt either.

Option 1 battery, to switch, to lights, to ground (this probably make the most sense to many people)

Option 2 battery, to lights, to switch, to ground (this is actually how a car horn is wired, and I think some other circuits. It will also save wire, unless you run back to the battery)

A note on grounding to the frame/body, for anyone who is not familiar with vehicle electronics. with a very few exceptions, most of your vehicles electronics run their ground through the vehicle frame/body. This includes your stereo, and subwoofer amp. Also your vehicle horn and lights use this method. If you look at the ground from your battery you will see that the main connection is directly to the body of the car. Just some good information for people wanting to add custom lighting and other effects to their vehicles.

[RoRo]

Finished product:



and the switch:


Thank you Daug for all of the help. Much appreciated!

[daug1502]

Looks great!

Any time, I am just glad I could help.

[RoRo]

Oh, I also wanted to add that the green color is definitely coming from tiny tiny diodes or LEDS on a circuit board inside the dash. I pulled it all off again today, but didn't take the circuit board all the way out because you have to undo the gauge needles to do that and I didn't feel like getting that involved. Anyways, part of the circuit board you can gently bend up and look at and you can see the very small boxes, smaller than a tic tac, that are attached to the circuit board that are directly in back of where the lights come on for TPMS, etc on the dash. I'm going to do some more research and find out how hard/easy it is to uninstall the gauge needles from the dashboard so I can get those tiny lights replaced.

[daug1502]

That is not good news then. Your best chance would be to try to see if they are lit white. If they are you might be able to make changes to the gauge faces themselves and get a color change that way. If they are lit green then I don't know.

If you take it apart again get some pics if possible, maybe someone will know a trick.

[LarsBud]

Really nice look, two thumbs up man!!