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Article &
Photos by Jim Bacon
Additional lights may not always be necessary for you rig,
depending upon the type of trips and trails you venture
on. Since I do allot of camping and have started
riding a few trails in the evening leading into night, I
thought having extra lights would be a benefit while on
the trail or setting up camp at night.
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What you
need:
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4 Lights
( my config. required 4 lights)
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12Volt 14
AWG wire (my config. roughly 40 ft. of wire)
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Various
nuts and bolt sizes to attach to rack
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Inline
fuses
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Relay
(ended up not using the relay)
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2 Toggle
Switches
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4
Brackets
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Screwdriver
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Various
socket wrenches
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Wire
Cutter / Stripper
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Drill and
drill bit ( I used a drill press)
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Electrical tape
I
decided to go with these Rally lights, which you can buy at
Wal-Mart® for $10 each and the wiring is roughly $2.75 for
20 ft. of wire. I decided to make my own brackets for
the light, because I could make my own for 4 bucks rather
ordering the kit for 18 bucks + S/H, plus that meant, I had
to wait for the brackets before I could do anything, and I
did not want to wait since I already had everything in hand.
You will
see in the photos to the right that I am holding a bracket
that has not been cut and then it will be shown cut.
These are "L" brackets that I picked up at a local hardware
store for cheap. I used my dremel with a cut off blade
and cut them down to the exact measurement I needed.
The good thing about these brackets is that they already
have a hole for the light that I needed, just used a
slightly larger bit to hone the hole to be a perfect fit for
the light.
After
cutting the brackets, I then used my drill press to create
two new holes that would be inline with the holes on the
front of the rack. I simply used a sharpie and drilled
away. After I had them all drilled, another quick
fitting to the rack and they were ready to painted black to
match the rack. Once they were dry, I installed them
to the rack, the outer two were going to be lower and the
center two a bit higher for a better light coverage when on.
All
lights are now attached, this was the easy part, now it's
time to create a diagram of how you want your wiring to be
wired abut the vehicle. The Rally lights, and most off
road lights have a black and red wire. The black wire
is your ground wire and the red is the positive which you
need to connect to a fused source. The first thing I
did was connect all the ground wires together and run one
single wire to a ground under the hood.
I wanted
the outer and inner lights to run independent of each other,
depending upon the need and situation if all four lights
were not needed. I also wired the lights in a
safeguard mode as I call it, because they can only be turned
on if the fog lights are on. This to me is a safety
feature, because I don't have to worry if I accidentally hit
the light switches, or if a passenger decides to ask "what's
this" after they flip the switch and blind oncoming traffic.
All I did was splice into to each fog light, so that the
power would be evenly distributed to each pair of lights
from each fog light.
It can
be tricky concealing your wiring completely, but since I
have a soft-top only, I ran the wiring on each side under
the soft-top at the top of each corner as shown in one of
the pictures on the right side. The I unscrewed the
part of the dash and tucked them in and ran the wiring under
the dash to the toggle switches. I used zip ties to
conceal the wiring under the dash. To help tone down
all the red wire on top, I used spiral wrap to keep the
wires neat and for concealment. Now, I just need to go
back and hit the bolts with black spray paint, and that's
it!
 
 
 
DISCLAIMER:
Yes,
the disclaimer is here! In NO WAY, am I a
certified or licensed electrician, nor state or act in any
capacity while performing this installation. Perform
this installation at your own risk. This article is
only for demonstration purposes only and we do not accept
any responsibility if you short circuit or destroy your
vehicle or yourself!
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