I changed the color of the LEDs that came with my rear wind screen to make it look more like real fire.
I did this with 3 different colored LED light bulbs. red, yellow and orange. The more orange you use the more realistic it looks. But you still need yellow with it. There isn’t really much red in fire. I used some red to make it look more like a tail light.
They come wired with a resister on them already
Take two bulbs and cut them and strip as shown.. the bulbs will end up staggered like shown. I stripped about a half inch. I tried to keep the bulbs as close to each other as I could and still get them to fit in the frame. This all has to squish down to get the cover plate down tight. I did the wiring inside the gap between the frame and the plexiglass. There isn’t much room about 1/4 to 3/8” That was how I determined how far apart the bulbs needed to be to fit with the wires and heat shrink.
I wired these up with the bulbs lit so I could see where I wanted to place each color. A 9 volt battery and test wires with alligator clips. I used a battery charger. And I did it inside the metal frame attached to the wind screen on a card table so I could get them to fit and see how the colored LEDs would look.
I would turn out the house lights to see how the screen looked lit up.
Now take a piece of the same gauge wire and strip the end half inch. And slide a piece of heat shrink on the wire. If you forget to do the heat shrink before you connect them you’re screwed. IMPORTANT ...There is no way to heat shrink the connection after. Make the heat shrink long enough to cover the soldered connection. Maybe about 3/4 inch to 1 inch.
9 twist the wires together to make a butt connection and soldier them. Keep the connection thin as possible. No big lumps.
Now solder the 3 wires together and heat shrink the connection. You’ll be left with the pig tail hanging out. Those small pig tails connect each bulb to the next. So it’s bulb, pig tail, bulb, pig tail. The pig tails will end up only being about an inch or so long.
You need to do both wires for each bulb before you add the next bulb.
You can see in the drawing why there is no way to heat shrink the connections if you forget to do it before making the next connection. You can’t slide a piece down or up.
The Wires are pretty delicate near the bulb. It’s hard to strip the wires that close to the bulb. I would recommend using needle nose pliers to hold the wire when you strip it so you don’t pull the wire out of the bulb.
