Ive bought strips of the LED lights audi style for my car but the issue is powering them, ive connected them together and connected them straight to the battery, ive also connected a switch to manually power them on and off (through the grill) there ok firstly connected but once I flick the switch to turn off it gets like a power surge and the wires fries itself leading to them not working, Suggestions? Im not a spark as you can guess
Wire them in off the positive for sidelight wires to the headlights and then you can run them through a switch that way. Pos off sidelights to switch Wire off switch to LEDs Earth somewhere on the scuttle
As lee says wire them off your sidelights, to use them like that. If you want to use them as drl's then you'll need a multimeter to find a powered 12v feed which comes on when you put your keys in the ignition, and off when you don't
They are getting far too much of a load straight off the battery, bearing it mind it has a couple hundred amps for cranking power. Get them wired up as Lee said, as the sidelights use a small amount of power which will be stable enough and strong enough to power the LED's too (they only require a small amount of power to illuminate them) and use an in-line fuse of around 10-15amp in a proper holder, pictured below, just for added security
Check that the current carrying ability of the wire is up to powering the LED strip. Also, make sure the LED strip is 12V, otherwise, you'll need a power resistor to dissapate some current. There will have to be a voltage and current rating somewhere on the device if the device is homologated for use in Europe. Another, more likely possibility is that the switch (if using one) is wired incorrectly - are there three terminals on the switch? On switching off, it sounds like the main power supply is getting earthed - this will short the power wire straight to ground, causing the localised fires! Always put a fuse a little higher than the amp rating on the LED strip otherwise some melty melty might ensue! p.s. Nicky - the battery (assuming 12v battery and LEDs strip) cannot push more current through the LED's than the LED's will allow - it doesn't matter about the size of the battery.
Another option could be take a wire from your ignition wire on the back of your radio as a switched 12v source