While I had the door apart, I decided I woud do a little pimpage. I decided I wanted LED Speaker Glow Rings. I drew up some rings in Corel Draw for maximum material utilization, which meant the rings had to be drawn into 1/3 ring.
Next I laser cut the ring parts out of .011" cast acrylic. The laser cut this material in under 5 minutes.
Here are the parts to do the job. 5mm Aqua Green LED's, 470 ohm resistors, the acrylic parts, and I used 18awg zip chord:
I glued the bottom layer together, then glued the top layer on, rotated 60 degrees to overlap the splices, while aligning the LED holes. Next I sanded the rings to frost them and diffuse the light:
I pressed the LED's onto the slots, and soldered a 470 ohm resistor to each LED's positive lead. Wired in parallel, then tested OK with a 9v battery:
I glued the LED ring inside the door panel speaker grill area with contact cement. It was a snug fit, and contact cement is kind of rubbery so it should not vibrate out. I spliced into the Ambient Lighting connector, soldered, taped, and ty-wrapped. Tested operational:
After putting everything back together, I tested the glow, and it is slightly visible in daylight. Will check it out tonight and see how I like it. If too bright, I will add another 470 ohm resistor in series with 1 leg of the power wire. Right now I calculate that at 15 volts and 470 ohms, I am driving them at 31 milliamps. At 12 volts that goes down to 25 mA and adding another resistor will bring them down to 12-15mA each.
