Welcome to my yet another very detailed LED DIY! I thank you for even opening this thread. It just means you have a interest in some sort of LED DIY's that I like to do every once in a while. so thank you thank you.
*****WARNING******
This DIY is not intended for.....
1. Pussies who just buys premade LED replacement bulbs and think that it's a "LED DIY" they just did.
2. Wimps who doesn't like to spend hours making a work of perfection.
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With that out of the way, I do like to use full size pictures, as I hate seeing threads of "how to/DIY"s and see small small fuzzy pictures. so please don't bitch/whine about the size of the pictures.
This DIY will work on..
S13, S14, 200SX, Altima, Maxima, and Sentra that are made in 90's. or if your dome light looks like what I am working with, it'll also work as well. It will also work with other models and makes if you can figure out what is +/-.
Material needed..this picture is old, but it has every tools that I use for all my LED works. Don't mind the gauge cluster, and yes, I did a LED DIY on that too.
Alright..let's start this!
side by side comparison of my first domelight and stock dome light. gray one is from a S14 and the black one is from S13. yes..they are same.
So..those metals with black "X" on them..rip them out. just simply not needed. I used a flat head screw driver to remove the rivets.
and it should look like this after you are done.
Alright, here is the "KEY" picture of this whole DIY. I obviously marked the + and - wires. and also, if you know how a switch works, it should be straight forward. I spent hours and hours trying to figure out which was + and -, because well, if you look at where the + and - wires are connected..it just doesn't make any sense, and also..at the time, I didn't have a VOM tester, so I had no idea what was what...but I did all the headach work for you all, so read on!
Alright, no picture of my showing you what size PCB you should cut it to, because it is entirly up to you, and I didn't want to do my old design again, so I went with what you see here. all you have to do is make a slight knife slits on the PCB, and simply take a plier and clip/chip it off. and if you want to get anal, take a file/knife and run along the edges of the clipped/chipped surface and smooth it out.
test fitting the LED bulbs.. as the diffused dome light cover is slightly curved out, i had more room to work with to flush it out close to the cover itself.
This step is optional step you can do, but since I like to make everything SUPER perfect, I even painted the PCB with just regular rattle can spray paint. that's just one layer of paint. and see what a difference it made? That's right, you can't even see the painted PCB and you can clearly see the normal brown PCB.
I want to warn you that you might want to masking tape up the PCB's back side..or it might turn out like mine. you'll see this "dirty imperfection" down along the page. Once the paint is dried out, take a paper clip and punch through each hole to open up the holes that may be clogged with paint.
So, here are some shapes and patturns you can make with 12 5mm LED's. of course you can use more or less LED's then what you see, but I was trying to decide what I wanted to do...
I went with "N" shape, because that's what the owner wanted(LuVz2sLiDe). you can't see what I did much, becase my wants of perfection, i even sharpied the resistors I used to black, and I even used black wire skin for my + wire for more stealthness.
So..here is the imperfection paint job, but I didn't need to use the copper seat's, so it didn't bother me much. This is another major "KEY" to this whole DIY. connecting all the resistors and LED's together. and since showing you a picture of how LED and resistor should be connected is much better then reading all this jibberish I am typing..here is the picture of how all this should be lined up.
it's all entirly up to you how to line up all the LED's and power them. you can either do it series like I did, or you can use the parallel method as well. here is a picture of that.
Here are some links that you can look/read over if you want to learn more about LED's.
LED Circuitry tutorial: how to hook up LEDs.
LED calculator for single LEDs
Current limiting Resistor calculator for leds
Here is a list of what resistor and LED's I've used.
4 of 100 Ohm resistor [you can pick up a 5pack of these resistors at radio shack for a $0.99+tax]
12 of 5mm T1-3/4 20 Degree water/crystal clear 14,000 mcd White LED, or more commly called 5mm Hyperwhite LED. [you can buy this online, my source of resistors and LED's is
www.besthongkong.com]
Sadly, that is all the pictures I have, and you all probably want to see the finished picture in car and what not..and yeah..this is where I failed..I don't have one yet. but oh yes..they are bright! so I'll have a picture of that up soon.
I would like to thank you for reading though my long ass very detailed DIY once again. If you have any questions, reply directly into this thread, or shoot me a PM/AIM/MSN/e-mail.
Happy DIY
mad-ass AKA Heat/Ho Young
Linear Mode
