I know most of you don't dig ricer lighting & stuff but just in case there are any aspiring engineers like myself that get into hand making crafts, this may be interesting to you.

The parts havent arrived yet so lets start off with a little quiz - What can you make with:
(2) 72" clear 3/8" x 3/8" acryllic rods,
(200) 5mm LED bulbs,
(3) 12v voltage regulators,
(20) 120ohm resistors,
20 feet of wiring,
and a solder?

Well if you guessed a complete groundfx kit then you are right. Yes, the old rainbow color kit is hittin the trash in exchange for a 25,000 mcd-street legal- ground kit. In theory it should be visible in anything other than direct sunlight and draw less than one amp to power muhahaha. Also someone stole ONE of my angel eyes, wtf, why just one? I think it was just too damn pretty to have two. Anyways I figured I would rebuild those to be twice as bright as they currently are now as well.

Wish me luck. I will post pics whether you like it or not when I start the project...

 

I've done a couple of similar projects, just not quite that big. Just curious...how are you going to mount the led's in the rods? I tried a couple of different methods (drilling, etc.), but had trouble getting the 'holes' clear enough...flame polishing sort of worked. Best results I've had were from casting my own rods, using liquid plexi. I never tried anything that long, though.

 

I heat the rods up with a heat gun till they are almost soft and then drill the holes with a fixed press... I used hightemp glue last time and it did a pretty good job of diffusing the light. I had 40 degree wide lens color LEDs last time & my new white ones are only 20 degree but they are twice as bright so I'm hoping that will make up for the difference in viewing angle.

unfortunately I'm working on a rather small budget (100$) so there wont be any strobe effects controller as my last set had. Though I may try to build one on my own but that would be a large undertaking. I'm still working on the voltage regulator. I thought about using the same one as my foglights but I'm open to more efficient.

Do you have any expertise to lend me on building the strobe controller // voltage regulator?

 

The rods arrived this morning but the LEDs havent so I only have enough to test out a few different linking methods. Looks like chains of 4 with a 100 ohm resistor will be the simplest way and also it will leave opportunity to add a controller to it.

 

Might also want to try sandblasting the rod...gives a nice dispersion.

 

The rods are not visible underneath the skirt of my car. Thats a little too much rice even for me.

Heres the prototye piece completed: Measures in at 15,000mcd at 10 inches - my car sits at 7.5" from the ground so I'm thinking it will be a big improvement over the color kit which was around 5,000mcd.

 

Looks like a winner.

I didn't intend for you to have them showing. All I was suggesting was that if you sand blast the rods, you get more of a soft glow, and less of the spot effect on the ground. So it wouldn't look as much like lots of LED's.

All depends on what you're looking for.

 

hmmmm didnt think about that, I'll have to see how it looks before I go sanding those beautifully shiny and smooth surfaces.

 

Sanding the edge is the way to go if you want a smooth color flow without direct points of light. You can also try flat topping the LED's. Just knocking the top fo the LED down makes a nice difference.

Where in Zhills are you?

 

they are spaced so close that I'm hoping there wont be any light direction points betwen the LEDs, or at least well patterned spaces. If I have to I'll sand it but its already taking too long to fabricate each bar.

I live right off of 301 and I hold my own saturday meet at sonic - I'm in the "I'm the only car that shows up at the zhills meet crew #1"