HOBBY: Light It Up- Upgrade Your Rhino With LED’s

It also comes with a resin cast headlight shroud of the same basic dimensions as that found in the Rhino kit, but this shroud has custom-made LED sockets for easy install and perfectly aligned headlights.

I started the conversion of this Stalker kit off by planning where the leads would run and test fitting the headlight shrouds. They fit nicely where a normal headlight shroud would mount so I decided to cut access holes for the wires behind this section.

Then I cut access holes through the inner Rhino access doors.

I intended to glue the side hatches on the Rhino anyway, so this didn’t cause any problems with the exterior of the finished model.

Here are the finished LED wire cutouts that can now be routed through the Rhino door so all the leads could be attached together inside the passenger compartment.

Stripping the ends of each lead and then using the wire nut to hold them is a simple process, just be somewhat careful when removing the wire sheath as the internal wire strands are delicate and can easily be ripped off as well.

 Once all the wires are connected together (including the lead to the battery holder/switch, I just stuffed them all into the passenger compartment and finished building the rest of the Rhino as normal. One nice thing about the wire nuts included in this kit is that they will accommodate many more LED leads should you decide to go crazy and add other lighting effects to the vehicle.

The CR2032 batteries that this kit requires- 2 of them- are pretty expensive ($4-6 each) if you just buy them at your local hardware or electronics store. But, they are very cheap (about $1 for two, plus shipping) if you plan ahead and buy them on e-bay or some other online site.

 Once the batteries were installed and I turned on the lights, I was stunned at how bright these LEDs seemed. I don’t recommend looking directly into them straight on… But they create a really cool looking headlight effect on the kit I built. Night fight first turn? Pfft…. These things could light up the entire board if you actually turned the lights out.

Overall, it is a simple kit and easy to incorporate into a Rhino-chassis vehicle. Other applications obviously include other vehicle kits, however the included headlight shrouds may or may not be useful in those cases.

The battery holder/switch is fairly thin but is kind of long so definitely plan where you want your battery/switch to be prior to starting your conversion- it may not fit just anywhere. You will also need easy access to the switch so you can change out the batteries and turn on/off the LEDs. So that’s it, a simple yet cool looking conversion using the Blood and Skulls Industries lighting kit.