Themistocles
Well-Known Member
- Thread starter
- #16
I have had a bit of electrical work building up over the last few months; Rigid LED light bar, HIDs, rear LEDs, rock lights, marker lights, and step lights. I had been waiting until I had a totally free weekend so I could do all the electrical at once. After 3-months of waiting, I finally gave up on the notion of ever having a totally free weekend and figured I would just do it piece by piece as I had some time. I figured I would start with my Rigid 10" LED light bar as it was probably the easiest.
Overall the install was easy, took about 3.5 hours and most of that was spent figuring out the best way to mount the bar on my Roam front bumper. There were a few easy options, but all had drawbacks I didn't want to accept. The biggest issues were protection of the bar and blocking as little airflow as possible, cooling in JLURD is already a limiting factor for towing without sticking things in front of the grill. I finally decided where and how to mount the bar and completed the job easily.
The factory aux switches and already pulled pigtails made the job so much easier. That is a factory option winner in my opinion.
The aux switches are tied to wires in the cab and under the hood next to the battery (diesel).
Aux 1: Brown / Pink - 40 Amp
Aux 2: Green/Pink - 40 Amp
Aux 3: Orange/Pink - 15 Amp
Aux 4: Blue/Pink - 15 Amp
Wires uncurled from factory location
I decided to run the LEDs off the 40 Amp Aux 1 switch thinking that I would put in a pigtail for the HIDs and run my front floods (Rigid LED) and spots (Baja Designs HIDs) off one switch. Doing that would result in a draw of just under 15 Amps for normal use, but would peak around 30 Amps for cold start-up. Since the start-up load would only be over maybe 200 - 300ms it might not blow a 15 Amp fuse, but I was not willing to take that chance. I am now reconsidering and think I may go back in and wire them separately to the 15 Amp switch (LED) and 40 Amp switch (HID) (Aux 3 & 1). I'll run them off one switch for a while and see if I like it. Upside is it leaves me three vacant switches and I can turn them off more quickly on only one switch. Downside is that I have less control and must run them together.
For install location I decided I wanted to install the bar where it would be protected from trail impacts as much as possible and would not block airflow to the radiator. I considered mounting on top of the hoop, or directly to the front of the bumper. However, both those locations would have facilitated me knocking the bar off fairly quickly and on top of the hoop would have caused blockage/turbulence in the air going to the radiator. I was a bit worried about leaving space for a winch projecting out of the top of the bumper. I grabbed measurements for the Warn Evo, the Smittybilt XRC Gen3, and the Quad Stealth. From what I can tell all three will fit in the space left.
Front View
Lights are bright, need to get them out on the trail to test, but overall very happy with them. I picked up this bar on the Rigid Outlet for about 100$...money well spent I think.
Overall the install was easy, took about 3.5 hours and most of that was spent figuring out the best way to mount the bar on my Roam front bumper. There were a few easy options, but all had drawbacks I didn't want to accept. The biggest issues were protection of the bar and blocking as little airflow as possible, cooling in JLURD is already a limiting factor for towing without sticking things in front of the grill. I finally decided where and how to mount the bar and completed the job easily.
The factory aux switches and already pulled pigtails made the job so much easier. That is a factory option winner in my opinion.
The aux switches are tied to wires in the cab and under the hood next to the battery (diesel).
Aux 1: Brown / Pink - 40 Amp
Aux 2: Green/Pink - 40 Amp
Aux 3: Orange/Pink - 15 Amp
Aux 4: Blue/Pink - 15 Amp
Wires uncurled from factory location
I decided to run the LEDs off the 40 Amp Aux 1 switch thinking that I would put in a pigtail for the HIDs and run my front floods (Rigid LED) and spots (Baja Designs HIDs) off one switch. Doing that would result in a draw of just under 15 Amps for normal use, but would peak around 30 Amps for cold start-up. Since the start-up load would only be over maybe 200 - 300ms it might not blow a 15 Amp fuse, but I was not willing to take that chance. I am now reconsidering and think I may go back in and wire them separately to the 15 Amp switch (LED) and 40 Amp switch (HID) (Aux 3 & 1). I'll run them off one switch for a while and see if I like it. Upside is it leaves me three vacant switches and I can turn them off more quickly on only one switch. Downside is that I have less control and must run them together.
For install location I decided I wanted to install the bar where it would be protected from trail impacts as much as possible and would not block airflow to the radiator. I considered mounting on top of the hoop, or directly to the front of the bumper. However, both those locations would have facilitated me knocking the bar off fairly quickly and on top of the hoop would have caused blockage/turbulence in the air going to the radiator. I was a bit worried about leaving space for a winch projecting out of the top of the bumper. I grabbed measurements for the Warn Evo, the Smittybilt XRC Gen3, and the Quad Stealth. From what I can tell all three will fit in the space left.
Front View
Lights are bright, need to get them out on the trail to test, but overall very happy with them. I picked up this bar on the Rigid Outlet for about 100$...money well spent I think.
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