I just ordered off Amazon some strips of 9 red, LED lights to put in my T/A's nostrils. The product page doesn't give much of a description except that they are made to be run off a 12v power source (about 1.3v per bulb). I have heard that you need to have a resistor in between your power source and LED, otherwise the bulbs will burn out. Is this true, and how many ohms should the resistance be?

 

Deppends on what voltage the LED is rated for, and how much current it draws at the rated voltage in order to calculate the value and size of the resistor.

 

I think you may be thinking of when LED's are used as tail light/turn signal lamps, so that they don't blink like a strobe light.
You're using the light strip as an accent light, and it's made to run off 12 volts, not an issue then.

 

Alright, good. Thanks guys, makes my life a bit easier.

 

Got both my LED strips in today. I'm not sure how to go from here, either have each strip on its own 12v battery and tuck them some where in the nostrils, or run them both off one battery, or try to rig it to the car battery (which would mean having to run a long wire somewhere down the hood). I tested a strip on a 8.4v 1500 MAH NICD battery and all LED's stayed alight (would having 12v make them brighter?)

 

I use to have a high top conversion van that was loaded with leds from the factory and all the strips were wired up on a toggle switch running to a relay then to the battery for each set of lights such as the ones on the running boards, then another toggle switch for the interior lights around the top, another for the lights above the window shades, etc. Never had a problem with all of that extra stuff running off the main battery unless we partied too long without cranking the engine! LOL

 

^heh, the battery in the car is only 12 volts too. I would think the amount of amps is more important than volts for these lights no? I would figure it woulc take a certain amount of milliamps for them to work and not a certain amout of voltage, but I don't know much about this stuff.

 

Personally, I don't think 2 of the light strips like you are talking about is going to make any difference to your battery unless you leave them on after turning the engine off. Think about the stereo components people load on the cars battery. The main thing is when you wire them up, wire them up so that when the key is turned off, the lights cannot be left on even if the switch is on.

 

That's what I was figurin too. I just need to figure out a clean way to wire them from the nostrils to the battery. The good part is, these strips are already encased in a rubber plastic and are waterproof.

 

LED lights have a very low power draw, not much at all to worry about. You can run a power wire directly from the battery, with an in-line fuse, to the hot leads of the lights. Then connect the ground wires on the lights together, with another wire that leads into the interior of the car. Connect that wire to one side of a switch, and another wire on the other side of the switch, with that wire screwed to a good body ground source under the dash. The switched ground will complete the circuit to turn on the lights.