smurfslayer
Be vewwy, vewwy quiet. We’re hunting sasquatch77
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2016
- Posts
- 16,264
- Reaction score
- 23,936
Not long after gettin the Rap I stuffed a pair of 17” amazon LED bars behind the grill.
LED light bar behind the grill with pics
for some reason, some of my pics are wrongly linked. The passenger side LED bar started taking in water from rain, it still worked, but looked like crap. I had decided to upgrade late last year but since the grill had to come apart to tighten the bar up, I figured it was wasted effort to pull all that stuff apart more than once. You can see, I got less than 2 years out of the cheap LEDs before one of them started leaking.
I hit up Adam from 4x4truckleds.com, to help a Raptor brutha out with a BD S8 behind the grill kit. I checked out what some others did
Baja Designs S8 30" Grill Light bar kit install
Did this project in conjunction with adding some direct drive air horns.
This time, I put a timer on me and from start to having the grill out was 26 minutes. The first time was awful - video, work, check the video again, did I do that right?
The kit goes in easily; the mounts are fairly obvious with the instructions, routing the wires in the grill sections is not.
If you do this and you put the wiring harness you disconnect right at the beginning behind the s8, make sure you are not obstructing the shutters. BD instructions don’t really touch on this.
I’ve seen some questions about aiming the led bar. it’s not hard.
As you can see above, you need a 1/4” drive socket, at least one extension, and 1 swivel. Take your time, if the clearance is too tight and the socket won’t seat, push back on the s8 with something that won’t mar the finish. loosen. Positioning is tricky because the bar is pressing against the grill front. make slow adjustments. At times I used a big flat blade screw driver to push on the bar fins. Once I had the initial aim done I snugged but did not fully tighten the bar. Tested out, made final adjustments and tightened down.
Easy Peasey. Maybe a 2 beer (pint) job. 3 if you’re drinking swill. There should be no more than 2 leftover parts after reassembly.
air horn trumpets just behind the front plate.
DTC P0037 anyone? Yup. somehow I managed to cause a trouble code; p0037 AAT sensor fault 00:AF
that’s the ambient air temp sensor.
ok, I know it’s a 70 thousand dollar truck but... you have got to be kidding me! the thermometer sets a fault code if it reads a high temp ( and defaults to 50f on the display or about 10c and makes the fans go ape $hit on start up, and disables the auto stop start ). all because the temp sensor reads something goofy.
Forscan made short work of it and it hasn’t been returning. I’m guessing I pissed Lucille off and she was just venting.
here’s just the low beams.
I dug up the old picture with the Amazon LED bars:
even though there is a huge hot spot right in front of the truck, this is after aiming the bars several times. They threw a lot of light, but it spread out quickly.
Here’s the S8 in approximately the same place.
in for a penny, in for a Euro - all 6 squadrons added for good measure:
I didn’t want to use a street, but back here there’s practically no traffic.
The S8 throws light significantly farther downrange, even behind the grill. The cheap amazon bars were completely signed off by 200, maybe 225 meters. There was a lot of light, but it was incoherent.
The S8 is throwing a combination pattern - spot and wide and it’s throwing usable light easily 2 - 3 times as far. The amazon bars were rated at 7500 lumens / bar. The S8 is rated at something like 18,900 lumens.
If you’re undecided about spending the big money for a decent light bar, spend the extra money.
LED light bar behind the grill with pics
for some reason, some of my pics are wrongly linked. The passenger side LED bar started taking in water from rain, it still worked, but looked like crap. I had decided to upgrade late last year but since the grill had to come apart to tighten the bar up, I figured it was wasted effort to pull all that stuff apart more than once. You can see, I got less than 2 years out of the cheap LEDs before one of them started leaking.
I hit up Adam from 4x4truckleds.com, to help a Raptor brutha out with a BD S8 behind the grill kit. I checked out what some others did
Baja Designs S8 30" Grill Light bar kit install
Did this project in conjunction with adding some direct drive air horns.
This time, I put a timer on me and from start to having the grill out was 26 minutes. The first time was awful - video, work, check the video again, did I do that right?
The kit goes in easily; the mounts are fairly obvious with the instructions, routing the wires in the grill sections is not.
If you do this and you put the wiring harness you disconnect right at the beginning behind the s8, make sure you are not obstructing the shutters. BD instructions don’t really touch on this.
I’ve seen some questions about aiming the led bar. it’s not hard.
As you can see above, you need a 1/4” drive socket, at least one extension, and 1 swivel. Take your time, if the clearance is too tight and the socket won’t seat, push back on the s8 with something that won’t mar the finish. loosen. Positioning is tricky because the bar is pressing against the grill front. make slow adjustments. At times I used a big flat blade screw driver to push on the bar fins. Once I had the initial aim done I snugged but did not fully tighten the bar. Tested out, made final adjustments and tightened down.
Easy Peasey. Maybe a 2 beer (pint) job. 3 if you’re drinking swill. There should be no more than 2 leftover parts after reassembly.
air horn trumpets just behind the front plate.
DTC P0037 anyone? Yup. somehow I managed to cause a trouble code; p0037 AAT sensor fault 00:AF
that’s the ambient air temp sensor.
ok, I know it’s a 70 thousand dollar truck but... you have got to be kidding me! the thermometer sets a fault code if it reads a high temp ( and defaults to 50f on the display or about 10c and makes the fans go ape $hit on start up, and disables the auto stop start ). all because the temp sensor reads something goofy.
Forscan made short work of it and it hasn’t been returning. I’m guessing I pissed Lucille off and she was just venting.
here’s just the low beams.
I dug up the old picture with the Amazon LED bars:
even though there is a huge hot spot right in front of the truck, this is after aiming the bars several times. They threw a lot of light, but it spread out quickly.
Here’s the S8 in approximately the same place.
in for a penny, in for a Euro - all 6 squadrons added for good measure:
I didn’t want to use a street, but back here there’s practically no traffic.
The S8 throws light significantly farther downrange, even behind the grill. The cheap amazon bars were completely signed off by 200, maybe 225 meters. There was a lot of light, but it was incoherent.
The S8 is throwing a combination pattern - spot and wide and it’s throwing usable light easily 2 - 3 times as far. The amazon bars were rated at 7500 lumens / bar. The S8 is rated at something like 18,900 lumens.
If you’re undecided about spending the big money for a decent light bar, spend the extra money.
