3/25 UPDATE and Question: Passenger LED car lighting: Separating LED strip lights for individual lights

You have to cut the strips apart to make it work, right now the LED's have traces in the flex connecting them.  What Stan was illustrating was really cutting them so you had individual LED's and all the wiring was added.

Thanks, GRJ. Completely forgot about the trace.

In the "Before" photo above where the strip is uncut, the LEDs seem to me to be lit.

Carl,

I did the same awhile ago. Got good results on the first attempt, followed by 8 fails. Decided I didn’t need another set!

Truthfully, I just wire three white LED's in series for this kind of need, I don't need all the tape flapping around in the breeze anyway.

Why don't you make life easy for yourself?

Rod

Agree with Rod, using the pcb board makes installing observation car lighting a snap,  

@Rod Stewart, you probably already noticed your board design doesn't adapt to the Lionel style roof depicted in the original post.  Perhaps you could re-design a board to fit that smaller piece including a hole for the long screw the head of which slides into that slot and holds that part to the chassis with a nut on the bottom.

Took @gunrunnerjohn advice and wired 3 separate LEDs in series as shown below.

Question: what adhesive should be used to attach the LEDs to the lenses? Can the adhesive be applied to the LED itself so it can be placed directly on the taillight lens?

Also, is light scatter a concern for this installation? If so, how is it avoided?

Any other suggestions/advice?

I use CA adhesive and glue the lens of the LED directly to the various light lenses.  Of course, I use discrete LED's, but the same would work for the SMT.  Note that since you're wiring them discretely anyway, a plain flat-faced 3mm LED would probably works as well as chopping up strips.

@Pingman posted:

Took @gunrunnerjohn advice and wired 3 separate LEDs in series as shown below.

Question: what adhesive should be used to attach the LEDs to the lenses? Can the adhesive be applied to the LED itself so it can be placed directly on the taillight lens?

Also, is light scatter a concern for this installation? If so, how is it avoided?

Any other suggestions/advice?

Carl- I use a hot glue gun to set LED's to the lenses. As John said CA glue works well too.

For light leak, get a can of liquid tape and paint the backs of the LED's if necessary.

Bob

Thanks for the replies GRJ and Bob. The individual LEDs shown in my update will work fine; the chopped-up strip lights didn't work, probably due to my lousy soldering.