My son would like to apply lights to the front of his car to light up the YO in the TOYOTA on the grill of our FJ Cruiser. He has spent a lot of time pulling the letters apart and recasting the Y and O in a translucent material. We drilled holes in the back of the letters and we purchased individual LEDs to insert and power. Unfortunately, the resulting effect a bunch of pinpoint lights in the letters and a mess of wires to navigate. What we were looking for is a consistent light applied across the letters and not the individual pinpoints of light. It seems like we may have taken the hard path with less than ideal results. In a perfect scenario, we could apply a mini-led rope type light, but I'm not finding a good source. I've seen them used for wall-art and etc. where it looks like a constant strip of white light (not a run of individual LEDs).

Any recommendation to put us on the right path would be greatly appreciated.

I have a black and red themed car and i really want some LED "strips" underneath the car and inside under the panels and seats, but i cant seem to find any good products, and i dont mind paying a good amount as long as its good quality and isnt connected via 12v inside the car, ill do wireing around the car too if its neccessary, hope someone has some experience with this and will help me out:) Thanks

Hi All,

A lot of you have expressed interest in how you might go about installing your own lights in your Volvos. I'm writing this guide for the P3 chassis, but I imagine it applies to other chassis groups. Before I continue, I want to address the elephant in the room: the colors

**These are fully addressable RGB LED lights. If you don't want to have it be a rainbow...**then don't make it a rainbow. Pick a solid color, or two or three, or whatever you want. It is as fully customizable as the lights on your computer or keyboard. In my original post, I explained that I prefer to keep it on a solid color with low dimness, and people seemed to miss that point and assumed it was RGB all the time.

This guide is written as a bonus to the instruction video found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaadvOglnkc

Things you'll need

• 12v tester: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Q3622FT

• Torx bits

• A lighting kit, this is the one I chose: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZ3YDSD7

• Trim Removal tool

• A way to connect to 12V AC power

1. Find where you would like to place your lights. I chose the curves in the door cards and the gaps in the dash.

2. Do a test fit of your light strips to make sure they fit. You will have to apply a lot of pressure to get them to slot in. You can also take a knife and cut away the creases to make it easier to slot them in.

3. Once the test fit is complete, mark where you would like the pass-through to be. The strips have a bit of black and a cable that hangs off the end. That white plug attached to the cable is pretty wide. If you have a Dremel, I'd make a rectangular cut or just use a drill. The gap will seem unsightly, but you can always cover it up later.

4. VERY IMPORTANT. ALWAYS TEST THE LIGHTS BEFORE DISASSEMBLY. You never know if something is faulty. Test all the lights that come with the kit of your choice and make sure they power on. See the video for more details.

5. Take off the door cards of all the doors. There is normally a total of 3 torx 25 screws holding them in place for the front and rear. For the front doors, you'll have to remove the speakers at the top using a trim removal tool. Please be careful not to break the tabs on them.

6. The door cards are a pain to get off, so start from the bottom and work your way up.

7. Use your 12V testing tool. Look in the wiring harness to find 12V power. In the driver door, this is BLACK AND PURPLE + BLACK AND RED. Each door is different, so you will have to test each plug individually.

8. Make the necessary cuts to the door cards to get the wires to slide through.

9. Double-check the strips to make sure they're all flush and then put all the door cards back together after connecting the newly added strips to the remove hubs in each door panel.

10. The next thing is figuring out how you want to route your central lights that run across the dash. I personally decided to have them both meet on the passenger side by routing the left-hand light cables behind the air vents and tucking them where the glove box is. Fortunately, the kit does come with an extension cable, so no matter where you place the main hub in your car it should be able to connect.

11. Finding a power source for the main box is the most difficult part. I recommend connecting it to the fuse box via a fuse tap. However, for the life of me, I could not find a grounding bolt under the carpet, and I didn't feel like ripping up my interior. Your choice, of course. I went with a cigarette lighter adapter because I was in a rush to get this project done and didn't have time to fiddle with my daily driver.

12. Once the lights are all connected and confirmed to be working, just work on cable routing and getting everything to look neat. I spent a lot of time off camera working on it, and I'm still not quite satisfied, so I'll probably do a follow-up.

This project is relatively easy as long as you're mindful of your cable routing and find safe ways to connect to 12V power. A lot of the difficulty comes from just figuring out where things go, but once you get a feel for it, it's exponentially easier. These kits can be ordered to have a multitude of parts, but I wanted something simple. Some warnings, however:

• The wires are annoyingly fragile at the connection point and will fray for no other reason

• The double-sided adhesive is....ass. And a pain to use. Use anything else

• The app is labeled and translated poorly, but the connection speed is good and consistent

• Alligator clips and other wiring connection tools are your friends.'

I hope this helped anyone looking to add to their car, whether it's a Volvo or not!