OK, I know this has been talked about over and over again but my search came up empty on other posts so here's my situation. I had my vent LED's hooked up to a switch that ran off of a constand source from my stereo which apparently was controlled by my tailight and speedo fuse. The LED's kept blowing out the fuse but the LED's still worked. So last night I went in again and decided to run the LED's power by tapping the cigarrette lighter. Here's how I had it connected:

2 LED's positive wires tapped together and the negative wires tapped together.

The positive wire running to one prong on the switch and another wire running from the same prong on the switch to the positive on the cig lighter.

The negative wire running to the other prong on the switch and another wire running from the same prong on the switch to the negative on the cig lighter.

Here's where the car almost caught on fire lol. I used some wire from my old neon tubes to run from the switch prongs to the cig lighter wires. Once I connected everything the LED's worked but the wires I connected got really hot really fast and burned off the coating around the wires. luckily nothing else burned and no fuses blew. So, what the hell am I doing wrong??? Or was this just weak wires? Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

I tried the same thing and the wires get really hot fast and stink.

what gives...

 

What are the specs of the LEDs you are using? Are you using any resistors or just hooking the LEDs directly to a 12v source?

Here's a very crude diagram of how everything should be connected.

Red Line = Positive Lead / Wire
Black Line = Negative / Neutral Lead
Green Line = Other wiring

I recently installed cupholder and center console LED's in my car and have them wired as shown above (except using a different power source). I used 1.9V 20mA 13K mcd Red LEDs with a 330 ohm resistor.

More In-Depth Info About LEDs: http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/components/led.htm

 

^^^ Good diagram

You need resistors for LEDs. They don't run 12v you know =p

 

wow, you guys ressurected my old post lol. I had it figured out a long time ago though. My LED's have resistors on them already and I accidentally ran a wire back to the negative so it created a loop and burned my wires. Once I took that off everything was fine. It's pretty much like the diagram above except both my LED's have resistors

 

good info :] ill be doing a project like this in a couple days!