Car Door Handle Lights

These LEDs are intended to be mounted under the handle to create a glow of colour from the handles.

You can buy these strips of 3 LEDs but they cost over £8 a pack for 2 I already had a strip of 30 LEDs which I bought on EBay for about £1.50 so I figured I would just make my own

Step 1: What You Need

You will need the following.......................

A 12v SMD LED Strip, mine is a stripe of 30

Electrical wire, I just used what I had to hand which was 10amp

A soldering iron and Solder

if you have one a helping hand soldering tool to hold the wire and LEDs in place while your soldering

Insulation tape

a hot glue gun

Step 2: Cut and Strip and Prep

We need to cut a length of LEDs that will fit in the handle of the car, 3 is enough and is what is on commercial packs but you need to cut well back from the first LED to allow you enough space to strip it back and solder the wires on. About 1.5CM should be enough.

Once you have cut it you need to strip off the double sided tape from the back.

Then using your soldering iron apply heat to the back for the strip where you’re going to attach the wires this will lift the water proof gel that covers the back strip, once heated just peel it back and cut off the gel.

Now you can reveal the contacts by scratching off the black covering on each side of the strip on the LED side of the strip.

Step 3: Attaching the Wires

Put the led strip and wire in to your helping hands tool if you have one and position the first wire over the contact and solder and then position and solder the second wire.

If you have a 9v battery and some test wires you can clip them on to the battery and on to the contacts to work out which side is positive and which is negative once you have this you can solder the correct colour on to the correct side.

Remember LEDs will only work with the correct polarity e.g. with positive and negative on the correct contacts.

Step 4: Water Proofing

I wanted to make sure the contacts would stay water proof and also secure the answer was hot glue.

Apply a generous amount over the contacts to sure water proofing.

Step 5: Finishing Off

To finish off and make it look tidy just pop a bit of black insulation tape over the contacts and your done. Ready to attach to your car.

I haven’t attached mine yet but as soon as I have I will put the pictures up for you.