Axis Wakeboard Boat Forum

Hey guys,

Thought I'd share a quick mod I did, I had the black plastic cupholders and swapped them out for the stainless steel ones and put homemade LED rings around them. They turned out really good IMO and I think I did the whole thing for less than $80 including the cupholders.




If anyone wants I can post all the part numbers and wiring connectors with exact lengths you need for a T23 at least. This was really easy to do and only required the ability to solder wire to an LED strip.

I would like to see how you went about it. Looks great.

So you take the LED strip, wrap it around the cup, cut to fit exactly on the line, peel the adhesive and stick to the cup. Cut off a 1/4 inch or so of the silicone waterproofing on the end you want the connector on so your contacts are exposed and solder your wire to them, cover with heatshrink. Cut your polyethylene tubing to fit (this takes several attempts to get it perfect when fitting over the LED strip and solder connection) then connect the ends with a metal dowel pin to form the circle and hold it tight (may want to glue them but I haven't had any problems with them popping out when cut perfectly). Plug your connectors into the your splitters so you don't have to run a wire all the way back to the dash for each one, then run extension connectors from your splitter on each side all the way to your dash, tie them in with another splitter, and connect to a dash switch.

I bought the stock switch from my dealer, then borrowed the existing wiring for my underwater lights that's already hanging under the dash and got my power and ground and tied my cables into that and it worked perfectly.

LED Strip
https://www.amazon.com/FAVOLCANO-Densit ... olcano+led

Polyethylene tubing - Get 20-25ft in case you screw up, you use about 12" per cupholder.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/B-K-3-8-in-x-2 ... 1000116037

Cupholders
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LW ... UTF8&psc=1

1-4 Splitter, 2 per side (run second splitter off 4th cable on first splitter so you have at least 6 connections per side), one for bow, then one at dash to connect port, starboard and bow cables
https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinf ... riteReview

Connector to solder to LED strip and connect to splitter (1 Male per cupholder - might want to trim to fit or you'll be zip-tying a lot)
https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinf ... riteReview

Extension cable to run from each side's splitter back to dash (one 9ft and a 3ft for the port side, two 3ft for the starboard side, one 3 ft to reach from port bow cup holders to starboard side bow splitter.
https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinf ... riteReview

Female connector to go from your dash switch to your dash splitter
https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinf ... riteReview

3/4" metal dowel pins (found at Ace Hardware .35c each) to connect tube ends to form cupholder ring, 1 per
Solder/solder iron
1/2" wide heat shrink

I learned this the hard way but the external cupholder LED tubes I made wouldn't fit in the bow because there's zero space between the vinyl on the speaker panel and the cupholders so I opted for recessed LEDs I found below. I then later found out the cutouts weren't a perfect circle and the stainless steel ones I bought are a hair too big so I'm going to need to get a router to cutout more fiberglass, but these will work with the above cabling, just get a waterproof butt connector to connect the wires to your LC2-M connectors to plug into the splitter.
https://www.amazon.com/Pieces-Stainless ... 4SENEKVAQM

Great write-up! Can you snap some pictures under the seats where you made all your connections on the tethering lines?

Any interest in building some rings with leads that I could then just install and plug wires together?

Yeah I'll get some pics next time I'm out. I haven't really "cleaned up" the install as I was in a hurry to get them in for the sake of it, but ideally they would be zip tied up behind the cupholder panel out of sight and out of the way. You could go with waterproof connectors like Axis uses on all the other wiring back there, but they are comparatively expensive and complicated to put together. If you've got lots of water back behind that panel, you've got bigger problems. The strips are waterproof themselves, just don't run them in a rain storm and you'll probably be fine.

So the LED strip sticks to the cupholder itself and the polyethylene tubing just slides over top of that. Couldn't really pre-make the rings to install on an existing cupholder. The cupholder flange and the base of the panel hold it in place. I suppose given enough interest I could make the entire assembly with the plug and get the exact number of connectors for different models by crawling through some friends boats. Hardest part of the whole thing is soldering and that's not even that hard.