LED's will not ground right?

So i have 4 small blue LED "accent lights" hooked up in a daisy chain in my trunk. I hook up the lights to a 12v source (a distribution block i use for my system) and then i ground them to bare metal in my trunk and the lights will NOT turn on. I had an extra car battery laying around in my garage and I put the pos to pos post on battery and neg to neg post on the battery and the lights turned on. I've tried several different grounding spots to no avail. 2001 Elantra GLS Viper D1200.1 Diamond Audio D6 Profile CA600 Cadence CWM-6 Components Pioneer DEH-3800mp Optima Yellow Top

the typical LED can only handle an average of 3.5V. Since you have them daisy chained all you do is multiply the voltage by the number of LEDs in the chain. In your case your LEDs can handle 14V. Sound sabout right. The only thing I can advise you to do is check to make sure you have the lights hooked up correctly since LEDs are directional as far as how the current travels. if that still doesnt work, one or more in the chain may be damaged. If you dont have any extras waiting around and dont mind waiting about a week for new ones to come in, a great place to order them is through www.besthongkong.com. Thats where I purchase all of my LED needs. "People with mullets live 40% longer"   - Ricky Bobby

if you have a dmm you could prove that you have voltage between the distro block and chassis (ground). your problem could be that you dont have sufficient voltage to make the led's work. Prove your connections, use a meter!

I promise, I'll behave!

what other ways can i hook them all up so that they represent a lower voltage impedance?

Hook them up in parallel or series/parallel combo.

Where are you grounding them at? If your using the trunk lid then that might be your problem, ground it somewhere else. If you have a DMM...when making a ground, always test to see if you have 0-1ohm resistance to what you know if a good ground. Good Luck!rtfm

parallel is your best best, even though you have to put a resistor on each led. If you run them in series and one of them blows, the addded voltage will be spread to the rest, and you will quickly burn out your entire array."the universe has a way of balancing itself"

try shaving some paint off in the area you are grounding at, or look for a ground point in your trunk, its usually a bolt with a big-ass lug and a cable or strap. in my 95 buick its in the wheel-well area, usually under the carpet. also the trunk lid is a wiz-poor ground. also, i dont know if you know, but just for the sake of mentioning for those who dont, leds are polar, they can only be hooked up one way. hope this helps.