Hello everyone,

Since I saw the J&M's LED Light Rings for batwing mounted speakers, I wanted them, but I thought that $225 was a bit steep (ok, way steep, no way in HELL I'm paying that...). I saw in a thread on here about gauge mods and someone's picture had LED's that they placed in their speaker rings. I decided to do a little DIY on this for anyone interested.

So to start off, I went with Cycle Sounds speaker adapters (6.5" to 5.25"). For the LED's, I went with 2 14" strips of side emitting LED lights. I got these from Pep Boys, but Oznium.com is an awesome source for these, I’ve bought tons of LED strips from there for all sorts of other projects. I bought blue ones.

The side emitting is nice because I wanted to project light into the silver face of my speakers (Polk DB651), and they are really thin which would keep these from being seen, and would be easy to work with.

So to start, I laid out the rings in the mounting orientation, and I drilled a small hole in the bottom of the ring, that's where I'll run the wires when this is complete.

Next, I laid the ring flat on a my working surface, and I used it as a strait edge as I used the adhesive on the strips to attach them to the ring. Now something to note is that the rings are cone shaped in most parts, and perpendicular in one part. I started at the flat section and worked my way around. I didn’t flatten the strip out completely, some parts, only the edge was sticking.

At that point, I made sure everything was straight, and I ran the wires in the hole. Then I took some superglue and I filled in that space between the LED strip and the speaker ring. You can do this with hot glue as well I’m sure, but this is the way I did it.




Once the glue dried, I hooked up some power and laid the ring on the speaker, and realized that these were going to be WAY too bright at night, and that it would take my focus off the road. I considered wiring a relay to an accessory switch, that would let me switch between a full 12V of power for the daytime hours, and somewhere around 8-9V of power for the night (so it would dim the LED’s), but I got lazy and opted to just take a black sharpie and darken up the front of the LED’s to cut the brightness down. It worked just fine. Maybe I’ll revisit the dimming option later.



So now you can go ahead and install the grills, rings and speakers into your fairing. I got power for the LED’s from the top right and top left gauges (I believe it’s fuel and voltage?) I tapped into the wires that lit the gauge lights (which I also changed to LED’s). I crimped on some quick disconnects just in case I need to remove any of this and don’t feel like cutting wires down the road.

So in the end, the price was $24 for the LED strips, wire and connectors I always have in stock, as well as the glue and such, so I have this accomplished this for 1/10th the price of the J&M rings.

Granted, I can’t change the color though like you can on the J&M rings, but that’s A-OK with me.

Some more pictures:

 

Nice job.

Great write-up, too!!

 

Yes nice job my friend!!!
I knew some day you would amount to something!!
(or as my father would say "mount to something!!!")
Kudo"s to ya.....

 

Great job !! Nice pics & step by step too !!

 

Awesome again!!!

 

looks great...
why are the speaker adapters offset? im going to upgrade to 6.5" as well & would like to know why you went with offset adapters?

thanks Dave

 

Very cool..............

 

Frigging awesome. I'm installing speakers and amp this weekend. Thanks for adding more work to my Saturday. LOL

 

You know a person could do them in red and wire them into the turn signals.

 

can't find a 14" piece but there are 12s all over on eBay. not sure what I am going to do