A Must Have
After riding with RedAss on a night run, I realized how important (and cool) it is to have some driving lights mounted on the windshield frame. I had been planning on getting a set from Hella for a while, but I had more important things to get (lift, tires, wheels). Now I really had to get some. I chose to mount them on the windshield (1) cause I like the way it looks and (2) my stock fog lights already occupy my front bumper. I picked up a set of Sun Performance brackets to mount them.
Installation
Installing these bastards wasn't easy. First you have to remove the torx bolts from the upper windshield frame. This was a bitch since the bolts are painted over and hard to get them to break free. I nearly stripped everyone of the bolts since the metal is about as soft as lead. I ended up using a box cutting blade to cut/chip away the paint around the bolt head. Compared to wiring the lights, the mounting the brackets was the easy part.
First off, the directions suck ass. There's a diagram that shows the what color wire connect to what. The problem is, there's a bunch of connectors that you have to splice on yourself and it's not that clear which ones go where. There is also no parts list, so you don't know if everything is actually there until you start putting shit together. The other hard part was figuring out where to route all the wires. There is a relay box and an inline fuse on the power wire which they want you to put inside the engine bay. I wanted to mount those behind the glove box for easy access. The power wire wasn't very long, luckily there is a hole in the center of the fire wall and I didn't have to run the wire from the battery to the driver's side, and back to the glove box. The wire still wasn't long enough so I had to splice in a couple more feet. Another problem was that they tell you to splice into the wire for the high beam to hook up the power switch. I don't know where the fuck that wire is and I didn't want to have the high beams on to use my lights anyway. So I pulled out the switch panel to the stock fog light switch and spliced into that so they would work the same way as the fog lights. The next problem is the the the way they tell you to hook up the wires is wrong. The wire that lights up the switch when you turn your parking lights on and the wire to the relay were backwards. Maybe it had something to do with not hooking them up to the high beams. I chose to drill a hole for the power switch in my center console right behind the stick. There is room for at least 4 switches there that will eventually be controlling more lights and air lockers. Mounting the switch and hooking up the wires was a bitch cause I couldn't figure out how to completely remove the center console. I took out all the bolts I could find, but somthing was still locking it down. So I pried it up the best I could and managed to get everything hooked up. Finally, I hooked up the wires to the lights and wrapped them in electrical tape to protect them. I routed the wire around the light bracket and in around the door, then behind the dash. Once I take the hard top off for the summer I'm going to tilt the windshield forward and run the wire through the gap to hide the wires protect them better. There is a screw that holds the dash in place near the corner of the windshield that was perfect for the ground wire. The whole install took me about 5 hours, although I did take my sweet ass time, but I wanted to do a good job. Plus I had to figure out how and where to wire/route everything. Next time it should only take an hour, keyword "should". |
