Lights
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Not all 4-Wheeling trips are during the day, and even though the Xterra has good high beams I like to really see where I'm going. And when half of your windows are tinted you can use all the candle-power you can get. The only hard part trying to find places to put all the lights and how to get enough juice to get the full potential of the lights.
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Light Bar I wanted to put the lights on the rack but I had to find a way to mount them solidly, it would be a pain if the vibrations off-road threw the aim of the lights off every trip out. My original idea was to get an extra roof rack cross member and drill 4 holes in it to put the lights on. I kept waiting and waiting then at GOX there was a guy selling some light bars that his brother had made in his shop. They were perfect for what I wanted to do so I bought one then and there. Since I didn't want the lights on top all the time I decided to have a quick disconnect of some sort, 4 lights will only have 4 wires so a 4 connector plug put on the roof would allow me to disconnect the light bar and take it off. That would discourage rednecks from stealing them, and branches from crushing them on day trails. |
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Daylighters I had also put alot of thought into what type of lights I wanted, they needed to be powerful and not too bulky. I decided to get two KC Sealed Beam Daylighters to pierce the darkness ahead, and two Daylighter Flood lights for the sides so I could see what's to the side of me. Because of the custom nature of the setup I couldn't use KC's connectors, I soldered all the connections myself. Each light has two wires coming out of it, a power and ground wire. Each set of 2 lights combines its wires together so the two floods became two wires and the two Long Range lights became two. The wires go down into the headliner by way of the roof rack footpad after passing through a 4 pin trailer connector. Once inside the passenger compartment the ground goes to the nearest bolt connected to the chassis in the A- Pillar. The power cables go down the A-Pillar, behind the dash and out the firewall through the clutch hole. Then they travel along the back of the engine compartment to the relays along the passenger side of the engine compartment. The Relays get power from the main accessory fuse mounted near the fuse box. |
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Light Switches The Relays had power but needed a switch. I wanted the switches easily accessible in the passenger compartment, so I decided to mount them on the front side of the center console cargo bin. I had seen some aircraft safety switches on a Bronco a few years ago and thought they looked really good so I decided to use the same for my lights. The install was pretty easy, the power for the switches comes from the fuse box. To turn the lights on you just lift the safety cover and flip the pole switch underneath. To turn off lights just flip the safety cover back down. |
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Backup Lights You may have noticed that the tinting of the rear windows has made if hard to see behind you when backing up at night, the backup lights are decent but the tint is too dark at night. I solved this by adding a set of KC Backup lights. The lights are pretty simple in theory, they have their own power and are switched on by a relay that the normal backup lights activate. |
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