Making their own angel eyes on the car
Every motorist seeks to make his vehicle as attractive as possible. And everyone at least once, but thought about creating angel eyes with their own hands. Using such parking lights on the car, you will make them look like BMW headlights of recent years. Headlights of this kind – this is their trademark feature. If this kind of headlight glow very much like and that is what attracts you to BMW, then you do not have to save money for an expensive German. Such dimensions can be done on every third car. The main condition – a round shape headlights. Almost all domestic cars have such a design, for example, VAZ 2106 or VAZ 2110. Just imagine how often will look at your car other motorists or pedestrians. Believe me, these lights are hard not to notice!
At first glance, the design of such parking lights might seem quite difficult, but in fact the creation of their own hands angel eyes will not take much time and do not require a large amount of financial investment.
All that will be needed in the manufacture of beautiful “eyes” (part of the materials can be found a replacement if necessary):
Jigsaw or metal saw; Pliers; Pliers; Plexiglass rod; LEDs; Drill; File; Drill bit; Drill bit; Soldering iron; Construction hair dryer; Capacity; Tin can; Duct tape; Resistors; Wires. Naturally, to create angel eyes, you need at least some understanding of electrical engineering.
Before you begin, prepare the necessary elements. Take a bar of organic glass, cut a pair of blanks for your car (according to the number of round headlights of the car, in which you want to install their own made angel eyes).
Fix LEDs in the bars and cut a kerf every 0.5 centimeters and install the resulting eyes in place of the headlights.
This was all described briefly, but now proceed to the full, step-by-step tutorial on how to make angel eyes. How to make angel eyes? Preparation.
Before you start assembling LED angel eyes with your own hands, you need to have all the tools and elements that were listed above.
Plexiglass should be in the form of a tube or rod and easily tolerate heating to high temperatures. If you go to the store, buy an expensive tube, do not skimp, especially since you do not need more than a meter and a half, and even a meter is enough. You can calculate the amount of Plexiglas before you buy. Take a meter and measure the circumference of each headlight. To each measure, add 2-3 cm for a cut and add all the numbers.
Let’s say you want to make angel eyes on 4 headlights: two large (circumference – 25 centimeters) and two small (circumference – 15 centimeters). Let’s calculate:
(25+5)*2 = 30*2=60 centimeters for the big headlights
(15+5)*2 = 20*2=40 cm for the headlights
60+40=100 centimeters
In the end, for four angelic eyes on the car enough 1 meter of organic glass.
You can find organic glass most often in the points of sale of curtains, blinds, construction and repair stores with a bias towards decoration and design.
All other elements can be bought in regular construction stores or car dealerships. Resistors should have a resistance of 220 ohms.
First, measure the circumference around which the organic glass rod will be placed. Take an ordinary meter or any piece of thin hose, if you have one on hand, and circle the headlights by measuring the circumference. The resulting length is applied to the organic glass tube and cut off.
Now heat this piece of Plexiglas to a point where it is flexible enough. You can use a hair dryer, a soldering iron or a container of hot water. Wait a while and make sure that the tube is warm enough to bend.
Using pliers, take the heated headlight blank and wrap it around a tin can or any other structure. Wait for the tube to cool. The diameter of the tin should be about the diameter of the headlight. You need to be especially careful when working with small rings, because short rods are quite hard to twist even when hot. Be extremely careful not to get burned.
When the workpiece has taken the desired shape, cooled a little bit and you can take it in your hands, remove it from the jar. Drill holes in the ends of the workpiece, where the LED will be installed.
Drill very carefully and at low speed. Organic glass is quite fragile and the resulting thin walls can easily crack under pressure.
Internal work with the tube is finished, now do it from the outside. The procedure is optional, but the “eyelashes” effect will look beautiful on any headlights if the notch is done correctly. It is important to keep the same distance between them here.
Take a jigsaw and lightly make notches on the surface at the rate of: 1 for every 0.5-1 cm (depending on the length of the tube). They are made in circles, deep down they should not exceed a quarter of the thickness of the tube. This kind of notch will help the headlights to emit a nice radiant light, like a “German”.
Fasten the diodes in the drill holes so that they do not dangle. You can fill them with clear glue, silicone or fix them in any other way.
Now you need to solder the resistors to the legs of the LEDs.
So you need 2 diodes per headlight (one on each side of the tube as a ring) and 2 resistors soldered to the diodes.
Next, you need to solder the cables to our billet for easy connection to the old wiring system. Twist the tube into a circle and wrap the edges with duct tape (if necessary). That’s it, LED angel eyes are ready for installation.
The final stage of manufacture is to check the lights on the performance. To do this, you can connect them to a power source and check whether LEDs are lit and normally disperse light. It is important not to reverse the polarity!
Once the new lights are ready, you need to temporarily dismantle the existing lights to connect the wiring. Install the new headlights with diodes on top, so that they are almost invisible.
Solder the new pins to the old ones, connect them into one “mains” and connect it back to the car’s main power supply.
It is better to install at night or in the evening to fully appreciate the lighting. You may need more powerful LEDs or a good polishing of the headlight glass. Bi-xenon lenses Motorists are well aware of all the advantages of xenon light and know how it behaves in the presence of lenses. Angel eyes together with bi-xenon lenses look much more spectacular and modern. They are perfectly mounted with all types of mounts and lamps without the need to saw a reflector. All you have to do is remove the glass, put the lens inside and close it back up.
If you have very bright LEDs, bi-xenon lenses prevent oncoming cars from being blinded and normalize the beam of light. Which angel eyes are better? The question is ambiguous and it is difficult to answer. If you do not consider the own hand assembly, then it is better to trust professionals who have already assembled similar headlights more than once. Find a person who can custom make angel eyes very qualitatively and quickly, you can on any auto forum or in social networking groups dedicated to the topic. We recommend contacting people who have put themselves such lights. They know how to correctly select the tubes, LEDs and take into account other nuances in order to achieve the maximum effect of luminescence at minimum cost. In addition, they can demonstrate on their own example how the purchased angel eyes will look like.
Prefer to make the headlights yourself? Make sure you pick a heat-resistant tube and LEDs with the right light output. Angel eyes with a weak light output will be virtually invisible against the main headlights. Very bright LEDs, on the contrary, will only blind oncoming vehicles and hinder their movement on the road.
Good luck in your endeavors and let your brand new parking lights with angel eyes will be the envy of the whole night city!
Angel Eyes with their own hands, installation
I met a huge number of motorists who were dissatisfied with the installation of angel eyes, as in BMW. The second commonly known name “LED rings.” Some shone weakly, others faded quickly, others had a blue tint of light.
At the end of the article will be a lot of photos of the installation on popular cars 2110, 2114, Priora, Kalina, Mazda, BMW.
The article consists of two parts, this is part 2. The beginning to read the part number 1. How to choose LED headlights
- 1. difference of good from bad
- 2. How to make them with your own hands
- 3. Installation
- 4. Examples of installation
The difference between good and bad
The standard of course are angel eyes BMW. At first motorists look at the quality of expensive cars, then they want to install inexpensive and more beautiful ones. But in the end they get a big set of disadvantages, because they think that different models do not differ. They buy the cheapest stuff with weakest and low-quality diodes and receive appropriate results. This contributes and stores that inflate the price up to 5 times.
A little LED wisdom. If you want to buy a candy bar, and you only have enough money for a piece of crap, it is better to save up for a candy bar.
Don’t buy cheap ones, they will break quickly. To replace them, you will have to disassemble and reassemble the headlight every time. If you don’t do it yourself, this work also costs a decent amount of money. A new pack of rubber headlight sealant will be required each time. Once you calculate all the costs, you’ll see that it’s better to put in good, long lasting ones.
Aliexpress sells ready-made sets of LED angel eyes for a particular car brand, such as Mazda 3. The price of such products is quite high, higher by 3-5 times. But as practice shows, the quality is low, the assembly is poor, and they break quickly. I often have to advise readers on what to do in such a case. Usually there are two options, replacing a few LEDs or replacing the entire LED ring.
To make it clearer look at the difference in characteristics of Chinese and brand LEDs 5050, 5630, 5730, 3528. The Chinese in a standard package put a crystal 3-4 times weaker, and the quality is 10 times worse. It is difficult to distinguish good from low quality, outwardly they are the same, you need to calculate the power of a single LED. Many online stores can not resist the temptation to cram a cheap product worth 100 rubles for 1000rub.
How to make your own hands
A popular method on the Internet, which barely shines.
The readers of my site are interested in how to make angel eyes with their own hands, after the current reading of articles on the Internet. Statistically, 99% of them do it for the first time and mostly want to save some money. Standards for light intensity and other parameters, they do not know, respectively, get not a very good result.
As a light source you can use the end (angle) LED strip or conventional flat.
On the Internet, the most popular option for making LED angel eyes with their own hands from transparent Plexiglas or plastic. It is applied shallow recesses, and from the ends are inserted LEDs at 0.2 or 0.5 watts. As you understand, the power is too low, the light will be scattered forward and inward, and reduced inside the transparent material. Such a LED ring will be fully visible only at night, the brightness at the level of an ordinary clearance.Even powerful LED diodes at 1W, 3W, 5W will not help.
The only correct way to make your own hands
In order not to break the textolite, first cut a circle and then remove the middle. Make conductive tracks and it remains to solder the LED. This method is quite costly then in terms of time and materials. To compare, the cheapest diode ring with 20 LEDs costs from 80rub on Aliexpress, shipping is already included in the price.
To make it shine at the level of a prestigious car, you need 5-10 watts of power and luminous flux of 300 lumens, and the light should go only forward.
Another way is to use a flexible light tube, which is most often inserted in headlights as parking lights. The tube can be cut and make a ring, the shape it will hold by contact with the reflector. The two-color tube will be able to perform the function of parking lights and turn signals.
Installation
Installation of angel eyes with their own hands is quite difficult, it requires skill, sometimes and good nerves. Installation requires disassembly of each headlight. Most headlights are assembled on the sealant, which softens when heated with a construction hair dryer. Much rarer is the sealant, which is rubber. It does not melt and does not soften, you have a few hours to gently pry it out and cut. One headlight can take anywhere from 1 to 5 hours. The first time it took me about 10 hours to disassemble. Inexperience, you can ruin the look of the product in the area where the glass and housing are connected.
Then measure the diameter of the landing place and make the installation of angel eyes. Degrease the bonding places and fix the parts. The kit often comes with double-sided adhesive tape for mounting, but I do not trust it. The halogen dipped beam bulb in the headlight gets very hot and affects this adhesive tape.
Wiring Diagram for RGB tri-color models
Reassemble the headlight in reverse order using a special rubber sealant. Assemble so that you can be easily disassembled the next time. If you assemble poorly, moisture will get inside, the headlight will sweat and the wires will rot.
Wiring diagram for monochrome
There are several options for connection in the headlight:
- switching on along with the parking lights;
- instead of parking lights;
- Combined with traffic lights;
- inclusion of two-color together with a turn signal;
If the connection to the parking lights does not suit you, you can use a controller for daytime running lights DRLs to control the switching on and off. Search for “DRL controller”. To connect RGB will suit the circuit from the single-color, only you will have to look for a place to place the RGB control unit.
If you are not confident in your abilities and do not have enough experience, it is better to ask an auto electrician.
Installation examples
The leaders in installation are domestic cars VAZ 2114, VAZ 2110, Priora. Among foreign cars BMW, Mazda 3, BMW E39, Ford Focus. Actively installed and on motor-equipment, scooters, motorcycles, quad bikes.
BMW
BMW photo
VAZ 2114
VAZ 2114 photo
Among domestic cars second place in popularity occupy angel eyes on the VAZ 2114, first place is shared by Priory and VAZ 2106, which have a round shape reflectors.
VAZ 2110
СМД3528 spark plugs for VAZ 2110
VAZ Kalina
Mazda 3, 6 Mazda 3, 6
Among imported cars popular angel eyes on Mazda 3, Mazda 3. Especially chic look on Mazda 6, which has four circles in each headlight. It will be interesting to look RGB LED rings, which will complement the lights and the turn signal.
Mazda 3
Mazda 6
Priora VAZ 2170.
The most popular option in Russia, these are angel eyes on the Priora. The shape of the headlights is well suited for such tuning, the reflectors have a round shape.
Ford Focus, Kuga
The article consists of two parts, this is part 2. The beginning to read the part number 1. How to choose LED headlights
