Totally Necessary Rock Light Mod

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Mjolnir

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Okay, so the first line is total bullsh*t. This is mainly a way to keep me from going out of my mind hanging around the house all day. I had one upfitter left and figured that rock lights may come in handy some day, and if not, they will at least give me some stupid grins as I play with the truck.

Okay first thing, which lights? I looked hard at Baja Designs and KC Hilites. In the end they were both just on/off and pretty expensive (also didn't like the magnetic mount for the KC ones). I wanted something a bit cheaper as anything in the wheel well would get abused. I ended up with oneuplighting.com based on some reviews I read and some features they have. The cost for them is about the cost of one decent Baja Designs light.

I went with 8 light pods. (you can get 4, 8 or 12). This would allow me two per wheel well. These are some of the features I liked
  • Inexpensive - this is more for fun than anything, so didn't want to drop $1000 on it. more like $250/300 all in.
  • Modular - I assume these things will break, and they sell individual lights which is nice
  • Mounting - this is probably the most important. They have a nifty rubber pad they mount on and even come with stainless hardware
  • White light - these are color changing, but they have an advantage as they have a dedicated white LED in addition to the RGB ones, which means the white is truly white and much brighter
  • Control Module - it just looked like it would be more weatherproof
I spent about 8 hours total across four days installing these lights. I will say that with the kit you will need at least 4 eight foot extensions, more if you aren't comfortable cutting the wires to length. Each wire has four leads and they are pretty tiny, but I like my wire runs to be clean.

They draw less than 5 amps so no relay was needed, you can go straight to an upfitter.

They are bluetooth (app is so/so, but did work okay for me) and allow you to adjust colors, have them beat to the music (this is the stupid grin part, for which I will get sh*t from everyone I know.)

Anyways, here are some photos and explanations if you decide to take it on yourself:

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First Things First - jack up the truck remove the fender liners.

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Next get one of these kick ass drill bits - allows for nice round holes in steel/plastic/ etc.

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For the rear I drilled into the fender wells, then used a grommet to protect the wire, and stainless self tapping screws to mount the pod.

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Here is the pod mounted. I found it easier to drill a small pilot hole then go to self tapping. I ran the wires up and around the well to the front side (used a fish tape to grab the rear wire.)

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The extenders have water proof connectors, but...

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a little extra shrink tube can never hurt.

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This is the area I am going to put the control module and wires. it is drivers side firewall, there is a great cavity for it.

View media item 15682This is the control module, it has mounting tabs, 8 dongles for the lights, power/ground and a bluetooth antenna

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You can see the driver fenderwall doesn't need to come all the way out (it has lots of things mounted to it), and you can see the location of the light install. I kept these as close to the outer lip of the fenderwall as possible. if you mount them further in you can see them from the side of the truck and it kind of spoils the "glow" effect.

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Because life, you cables with either be 2 feet too short or 6 feet too long. I cut mine to fit, leaving extra slack in case the front wells need to be pulled. I used heat shrink solder tubes, then shrink wrapped those, they seem to work fine.

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This is the front passenger well, you can see I used their mounting hardware (stainless) but added a larger washer and some loctite to keep everything in place.

View media item 156888 wires is a bunch of wires. I also loomed all the wires so they didn't wear through.

View media item 15689This is the control module in it's mounting position

View media item 15690All the wires coil nicely into place

View media item 15691I ran the ground off this nice 10mm bolt just in front of the airbox. don't have to remove it, just loosen it up and ground.

View media item 15693View media item 15694I took the two light runs from the rear passenger side thru the frame to the drivers side and ran all four wires up along the frame to the home point. kept it clean that way.

View media item 15695View media item 15696You can see how I ran the wires, this way they are protected, but I can still access them if a solder point or extension point fails.

and now...

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16.7 million colors, and some very bright lights. Yeah it's a stupid mod, but when I drop those quarters in the Starbucks parking lot at night, at least I will be able to find them....
 

Kashoggio

Lives in a van down by the river.
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I like it, have some to install myself in fact but have been way too lazy to do so
 
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