Looking for a way to better diffuse the light from your DIY LEDs? Consider the chop-top approach.

Purpose: Allow a wider diffusion pattern on your LEDs

The way to go about this is to clip off the top of the led and grind it down so that it’s nice and flat. Check out these comparisons.

Stock LED:

Chopped, notice the missing super-bright spot:

The power in your car is not free, it comes from the alternator and is a product of the huge amount of drag that this electrical generator puts on your car’s engine. I chose to begin my (unfinished) quest for LED lighting by converting my dome light to LEDs. It make be a modest start but it looks great and I’ve recieved many comments on it, even from some outside of the car enthusiast world. It seems much harder than it is, so don’t be intimidated if you’ve never done anything of the sort before.

Purpose: To cut down electrical loads on the charging system.

Time: 1 hour

Tools:
- Soldering Iron
- Knife

Supplies:
- LEDs (I used 15 10,000 MCD ultra brights)
- Resistors (100 ohm for this project)
- Some perf board (4 bucks at radio shack)

This is my awful demonstration of how the circuit should go. The resistor is crucial! I blew up one of these LEDs once and a flying chunk but a nick in my living room wall.

Grab your dome light outta the car. Mine was already out for randomness’s sake. Make yourself a little drawing to see how big the perf board should be cut.


Smash it into shape.

Start sticking the LEDs in. You want to line things up so that you’ll be able to tie all the negative sides together to go to the ground and the positives together in bunches of three so that each three can go to a resistor.

Look at it and be like, that’s hella sloppy. I just tied the four on the one end together and called it a day, in the end I soldered that straight onto the lead in the dome light housing.

All in!

Soldered completely.

Test wiring, notice the resistors are in also, don’t forget these!


All done but not mounted!

Mounted up on the car. I had to cut the board a bit to get the screw in there. Night pictures ought to be done but you can’t really see anything, just trust me and get it done! You can also use amber LEDs if you are into that look.