So, I have a few LED lights, about 10 small ones, attached to the Interior light fuse for power.

Just recently, the fuse blew. I believe its a 15 Fuse. I'm assuming the fuse blew because of the extra draw from the additional lights.

Question is: Can I, or should I upgrade the fuse to a bigger size, 20-25 to prevent this from happening?

Thanks.

 

Where are all your LED's located? or are some bundled LED's? 10 seems like a lot.

 

10 Leds should not blow your fuse... I would advise not increasing the fuse.

 

10 leds draws diddly for power... You probably have a short in your wiring.

 

10 individual LED's, all inline with each other. There is only one positive and negative wire for all of them together. They are for a series of puddle lights that run 5 on each side along your side skirts.

 

Okay, well being impatient as I am I decided to run to pepboys before any answers from this thread and get a 15A fuse (stock is 7.5).

I plugged it in, turned it on, and within seconds the wiring got extremely hot and started smoking a little bit.

Took it out. Now, I really do not know what I did, but I'm assuming that you would go with a higher fuse if your putting more load on correct. Obviously I'm wrong. Can someone explain how this works?

 

This was my initial thought. How does a short happen? Do you think it will be alright if I replaced it with the original rated fuse (7.5A) ? Because it was working at first without any problems, and then it blew recently, so I assumed it just maxed out finally. What would you suggest doing if it does blow again even with a 7.5A fuse?

 

If there is a short, I do believe that you'll run into more shorts / fuse issues. So.... you will have to find the source of the problem.

 

DO NOT PUT A LARGER FUSE IN THE CIRCUIT. PUT THE ORIGINAL 7.5A BACK IN NOW AND GET A KNOWLEDGEABLE FRIEND OR PRO TO CONTINUE.

Sorry not trying to "yell" but to be "firm". I mean no offense but you do not appear to have an "electronics" or "wiring" background. You should consult locally with someone that does.

It is always bad practice to exceed the recommended rating for a fuse. If there was to be some kind of short, or additional load, the drew more than 7.5 amps but less than the new fuses rating you could do some serious damage to wiring (melting/charring) and in severe cases cause a car fire. And that's no joke.

Generally speaking you will want to add a new circuit with a fuse appropriate for the load being serviced.

If they are typical LEDs drawing 20 to 30ma each and if they are wired in parallel then they might add 200 to 300ma to the draw. I seriously doubt this would create enough additional draw to blow the fuse. If they are wired in series, or some series/parallel network they will draw less power. I agree with others that there is probably a short circuit somewhere.

So seriously I'm not "dissing" you or trying to insult. It would be a tragedy to do serious damage to the electronics in your car over LED installation. The additional cost for a local pro will be much less replacing harnesses in the car.

 

If it worked in the past with the 7.5 amp then you have developed a short. Pull the wires out and look for burns.

You can cut one side and see if it is still pops fuses. I personally would move to a 5 amp fuse. and test that way.

You really do not want to burn up your wiring harness.

 

Adobe,

Thanks for the help. I really did not think something as little as LED's could be such a complicated matter. Anyways, I did take out the fuse, and what you mentioned about the melting, was just what happened. (You must be a fortune teller )

Anyways, I really never had good experiences with electrical shops in my area, thus I try to do things myself and learn from my mistakes. Which I did, but I still do not know what the absolute correct way of doing this is.

From what I gathered, the best way to do it is to buy an add-a-fuse circuit, that plug into the original location, while keeping the OEM 7.5A fuse, and as far as the 2nd fuse, would I add another 7.5 rated fuse? How can one I find out which fuse will be appropriate for my application?
The led's can be found here, http://autolumination.com/fixtures.htm , halfway down the page where it shows a black mercedes and it says 12V accent lights.

Kracker,

how would I test for a short in my wiring? What does cutting one side of the wiring do?

Thanks for all the help guys.

 

It helps you determine if the problem is on the side that is cut or not.

you bought the strip of 10 lights? I would think that this would be safe...

You can always hook up the lights to a power supply and amp meter...


I have 4 Cold Cathode inverters with 8 Lights and it only pulls 1.4ish amps at 11.85 volts.

http://people.cs.tamu.edu/mlw8723/Car2/

Look for really_test.avi (16.5 meg)

 

Kracker,

Yes, i bought a strip of 10 lights, they are all connected to each other and at the end I only have one positive, and one negative.

As far as cutting, are you just referring to cutting one side to locate where along the strip the short is?

 

Yup.. But that was before I knew it came as one unit... If you have any soldering skills then this is easy. If the wire is big enough to use wire splices then it is easy.

I would almost say try to return the lights, atleast exchange them... But you may have to take it apart and test it like I did in my video determine that it does take 7.5+ amps to run.

Also... Once you disconnect the lights you can check to see if you are still blowing fuses.. (pray that you dont). If you can isolate it to the new lights then that is good thing.


So... In the recent past I was watching Trucks on Spike TV and they were laying out a wiring harness for a truck they were building. They described a way to track down a short with a extra light. But I dont remember that much about it. But I would be willing to bet if you look around you can find it.

7.5 amps is alot.. You have a short some where...

Good luck.

 

Yeah, hopefully I won't be blowing anymore fuses!

I had one more question. I'm going to get the add-a-fuse, which is a fuse holder that turn it into two fuses. One for the original fuse, and one for the new addition. I know the stock fuse will remain 7.5, but I'm wondering for the additional fuse that will go into the add-a-fuse, should I go with a lower fuse, or 7.5 as well?

Thanks.

 

BAD BAD BAD. The wire that is designed for 7.5 amp from the battery will not work with second fuse... BAD. You are putting additional load on the same wire.

 

Hrm, I thought that was the right way to do it. Maybe my description of the add-a-fuse might have mislead you. This is what I meant.

Anyways, since we are talking about the 7.5A fuse, the one I'm currently using is the one located to the left of the drivers side foot area that's in the "interior light" position. So I should not use an additional fuse, and just try it again the original way of just tapping into the existing fuse using the original 7.5A fuse?

 

Okay, so I tried to do it the original way, and it started smoking again. I forgot to mention, when I had it working originally I only had 5 out of the 10 LEDs hooked up because I didn't have enough wire to go around the back bumper at the time.

So here is the scenario. I tried to hook the 10 LED's up to the 7.5A fuse inside the fusebox for the interior light. It heated up and started smoking. I tried using a 15A fuse, it heated up, and started smoking. It DID work with the 7.5A fuse, but only when I had 5 of the 10 LED's connected. Now that I have 5 additional LED's connected, it's giving me problems.

What can I do?

 

Show in detail EXACTLY how you have this hooked up. Hard to troubleshoot things when not knowing the full story. Are they 10 individiual LEDs or 5 and 5 or what? Did you solder them together or what?

How did you run the wire? Is it possible the wire has a knick in it somewhere that is coming in contact with metal on the car?

Is there a link online that shows what you bought in the way of LEDs?

 

So, what's the current rating of the lights? Should be on the box. Or the light strip.

Secondly, I bet you have a bare wire touching metal somewhere, or it's pinched.

 

It sounds like somewhere in your system is a short, and from what you describe, it's in the wiring to your led's, probably in the last 5. Either that, or one of the LED's is creating the short itslef (not likely). Even if there is no short, then you are overloading that circuit with load it was not designed to handle. What we do in this case is run a wire direct from the battery (AND FUSE IT OURSELVES-THIS IS A MUST) or find another circuit that can take the load.

The fact that you're asking questions of this nature means you're probably not ready to be doing this sort of work-but you could be with some study and initial supervision - we were all noobs at one time or another.

By the way, if you replace a 7.5 amp fuse with a 15 amp fuse, then what do you think is happening to the wiring behind the fuse panel when you double up on the current it is designed to handle with repeated "trial and error", circuit-blowing attempts at making the circuit work? The reason it's not a good idea to replace fuses with larger sizes is in case you have a fault (and you do), the fuse blows and breaks the circuit before anything else is damaged (like the wire leading to where the fuse is)...which only works when the fuse isn't over-rated for the rest of the wiring it's protecting. If something in your car does short circuit to ground, you can very easily start a fire, wreck your battery, melt away insulation on wires, hurt yourself, place toxic fumes in the air, produce other shorts by virtue of hot wires, etc. etc.

I would take the whole thing back, and either forget about it or get qualified help.

 

Alright, so here is a diagram to describe the wiring better.


There are 10 LED pods, that each house 1 single LED. They are all connected to each other and there is only one pos, and one negative wire that runs through all of them.

For the negative, I connected it to the inside post of the dome light which is the ground connection that can be dimmed.

For the positive, currently I tried to tap into the INT Light fuse, 7.5A, and with all 10 LED's connected, the wires from the LED's near the fuse got really hot and started smoking. The thing is, before I only had 5 LED's connected (I only had one side hooked up), and it was working fine. But after adding the other 5, it started having problems.

The box didn't state what type of LED's they were, but they can be found here.
http://autolumination.com/fixtures.htm , halfway down the page where it shows a black mercedes and it says 12V accent lights.

Now, would the problem be solved If I tried tapping it at a different fuse/source? Or have a power running from the battery with an inline fuse? I've done audio installs in the past, but those were pretty straight forward with DIY's, so I'm open for suggestions. I put a lot of work installing these lights, that I'd rather haev them work than throwing it out.

 

Are you sure those are LED's? If not, you probably over-loaded that fuse. That would explain why five work but ten don't.

Otherwise, I'm guessing that there's a fault in the wire where it runs across the car from one side to the other. I know the lights are in parallel, but tell me this...if you take one bulb out of it's socket, do the ones after it still work? The answer to that should help you localize the problem. If the answer is no, look for pinches/grabs in the wire after the fifth light (likely between 6-7). If the answer is yes, and you've ruled out an overload issue, then look for breaks anywhere in the circuit. Where's ground for these lights, btw?

Also, you didn't run the wire under the mounting clips and then tighten, did you?

You know, you could always do a continuity check with a multimeter from one bulb to the next as well.

 

Start by removing the wire completely and doing a resistance check between positives where the bulbs connect (should be near zero), then do a check between pos and neg wires on an empty string (should be infinity).

 

Yes, I'm certain they are LED's. The LED's are all sealed in their own "pods", so I can't just remove them unless I break the pod seal. I can however, tap into the wire to see the voltage.

But do you think, say all the wiring is correct and it's not in the wire, that it's the fuse that is at fault? Maybe that particular fuse just cannot handle 10 LED's, and only 5? Would I be better off trying another fuse, or a wire straight from the battery?

 

Is it possible to hook both + and - at the dome light? I think that you might be grounding out that circuit.

What worries me is that its smoking... It takes alot of amps to make that much heat... More than 7.5 and perhaps more than 15.

If that doenst work I say trash the whole idea. Its 30 bux worth of lights... If mess up the wiring harness then that is easily 1000 plus some for the install. Or worse you can catch your car on fire. Its not worth it.

 

I'll actually try tapping both + and - to the dome light itself. The dome light only receives power when the car is unlocked correct? So they won't be constantly on even when the car is locked, which is not what I want.

 

I have mine tapped to gray/blue and White (I THINK)... But its only on when the doors are open or the dome lights are switched on.. I dont know if thats what you want. BUT it will prove that the lights are not (or are) the cause of blowing fuses.


The cigarette lighter is switched with the key... Although its fused at 15 amps, I wouldnt run it on that wire either until you can not blow a 1 Amp fuse. 10 LEDs shouldnt pull more than half that.

 

aznbo, didn't anything come with the lights that said what sort of current draw to expect?

 

From the website you linked to it says other lights they sell are LED but, just calls these lights? Perhaps they are not really LED lights afterall? If they are LED lights they should not light when you reverse polarity. Standard fillamint type bulbs will light regardless of polarity. I can't see 10 LED's drawing 7.5+ amps of power.

As others have said maybe put an inline fuse on them and hook them directly to the battery. 7.5 amp fuse or less. If it still blows the fuse either the lights are shorted, not LEDs, or your wiring is shorted to ground some how.

 

I'll bet good money that you have a short in the last 5.

The fuse is not 'at fault'. It's doing it's job trying to protect you and prevent you from causing a fire.

 

have you considerd just not addding these lights, i cant imagine the headach this has caused you so far. just get some stickers or fuzzy dice? JK

i want to swap out my interior lights for some led's has anyone tried the uv leds from ebay = http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Blue-...96264291QQrdZ1?

 

Lol, I know, but I would really like to make this work. So far I'm still at a standstill, I don't know which option to try. It's the little things that make your car stand out.

 

Just return them. They have already demonstrated time and again that they are cheap...they don't provide you with current draw to expect, they don't work as advertised, and they are blowing your fuses and placing your nice car in danger.

Not having burn marks, the smell of baking insulation, and blown fuses are also "little things that make your car stand out." Don't risk this over a cheap set of lights. A few hours of cleaning and a coat of wax will go a lot further than these lights have brought you.