Andrew's 2022 Sarge Green Mojave - Northern CA

[Cspence]

Awesome, let me know if you have more questions. Only other thing I can think of worth mentioning is about the harness. Since all the wiring for each individual light splits off from a single place on the harness, making sure to be mindful where you decide to place that. For my setup, I placed it on top the crossbar just in front of the spare tire. That's what gave me enough length to reach every location except for the front two (which I needed to purchase the 4 pack extension kit - https://a.co/d/9PQlXl0). Even with that kit, the front two wires just made it to the metal bracket I mounted. (used 2 extensions per light, so it took me an extra 10 ft).

I also used a LOT of zip ties to keep everything up. I tried to follow wiring that already existed on the vehicle if I could, and in some places I went through holes in the frame (mainly the extension wires to reach the front). In the rear and front, there are locations that you could potentially route close to the exhausts, so where I could I tried my best to choose a route that wasn't directly exposed to heat.

Thanks for the extra tips! I have the factory Aux switches, so I'm planning to power via one of the 15a buttons. Given that, I'll probably try to have the harness centrally located, though it may be biased to the front. Hoping with the ~8ft leads, I can make it work. Not that its expensive, but it'd be a kick in the shorts when the whole kit of (12) lights and wiring cost $81 and then a couple extensions cost 1/4 of the cost more. But can't really complain, its a bargain overall. You made a good choice on these lights, they seem surprisingly well constructed with the full metal housing! Can't thank you enough for sharing!

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[Reddout99]

Going to sidebar for a second with a Jeep "adjacent" project. Bought a wheel+tire package, but not for my Jeep, but my son's ride-on "Jeep" I got him for Christmas. He's been loving it, but it's apparent its a pretty rough ride and its pretty loud on pavement (as to be expected, the wheels are hard plastic).

Since I modify all my vehicles, I figured I'd do this one as well. Bought some harbor freight pneumatic 10" tires and got to work. You can see them below. Since pizza cutter tires are all the rage these days the look like they would work pretty well.

I designed and 3d printed some flanged bushings for a tight fitment on the "axle" (set of two for each wheel) and pressed them into the bearings. That (+ some spacers) was enough for the front wheels.

Next came the rear drive wheels. I found someone who had designed a hub adapter for a similiar ride-on to convert to the 4 bolt pattern. First print almost worked, I ended up having to modify the design to be about ~ 8.5mm shorter and reprinted to make it fit my particular model.

After that was the inspection by the expert who will be driving this thing.

The pneumatic tires are obviously heavier than the hollow plastic wheels so acceleration from a stop seems slower, but boy did this make a difference in grip and reduce how loud this thing is on pavement. Likely I'll be doing further modifications (ie power) but that will be after he gets a bit more comfortable with it.

Love this

 

[HooliganActual]

I ended up wiring it to come on a few different ways with the included relay (and purchasing some diodes + a waterproof switch)
- Wired through the bed light switch as courtesy lights (comes on when opening the door, unlocking, stays on for 30 minutes when pressing unlock 3 times). I also have a switch in the right rear corner of the bed to switch off this if I DON'T want them coming on when unlocking (basically, to revert back to OEM if desired)

Would you mind sharing how you did this? I already have rock lights hooked to an aux switch and have been wanting to figure this out but it has just been low priority behind building out my bed, solar, house battery system...so I'm not afraid of wiring, just haven't gotten to this yet and you can help save me some research and brain work. lol

 

[arskemp]

Looks great, man. Sounds like you are finding great deals along the way

Thanks! I budgeted for the truck, but not so much for all the mods I'd like to do. That will probably always be a slow moving target. Should have never joined this forum

 

[arskemp]

Well, I got another 3d printer project that I did a while ago but figured I'd share.

Earlier in this thread I had 3d printed a mount for my cellphone. Long story short, it didn't hold up long term (eventually deformed) and I wanted a stronger magnet. My wife ended up buying a magbak case and was really happy with how well the magnets held. After rethinking where we might want our phones, I decided to purchase this mount that puts the phone left of the steering wheel and modified it for the magbak magnets:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B092S8MF5V?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

I ended up using all of the mount with the exception of the portion that holds the phone. Did some measurements of where the ideal magnet placements would be and designed a flat plate that would accept the threaded ball mount + found a nut from my collection of random hardware.

This mount has now been in the vehicle since around May. Only hiccup I've found so far is that because she has a pretty big/heavy phone it had a tendency to start to rotate the mount so her phone would face more down than she liked. To alleviate that I added some sticky back foam to the bottom of the mount and have it tightened with the bottom of the mount resting against the leather dash.

It worked well enough that I ended up buying the same style case for my phone so we could both use it. What seems to make it work so well is that the phone case AND the mounts have magnets (for example, I can just press my phone on the fridge and it will hold).

The reason I'm bringing this up now is that I finally purchased a second mount and did the same on the passenger side.

 

[arskemp]

Would you mind sharing how you did this? I already have rock lights hooked to an aux switch and have been wanting to figure this out but it has just been low priority behind building out my bed, solar, house battery system...so I'm not afraid of wiring, just haven't gotten to this yet and you can help save me some research and brain work. lol

What specifically do you have questions on? See my earlier post in this thread (116) for a general wire setup/schematic. Basically:
- The harness for my rock lights has a relay built into it.
- Power to the relay is going from an always on source (I'm using the trailer hitch wiring, going to the battery direct is probably just as easy)
- I have two sources going into the trigger wire for the relay (one from aux switch, one spliced into the wiring going to the bed light).
- Each source has a diode in line to prevent the aux switch from backfeeding into the bed lights (and vice versa).
- I also put a basic on/off switch in line on the trigger wire going to the bed light so that I could manually disable it completely.

The part you quoted also has the "stays on when pressing unlock 3 times" portion in it. That is a feature of Tazer which has the ability to keep the bed lights on when you spam the unlock button. This is actually probably one the more useful daily convenience features of Tazer that never gets talked about.

 

[HooliganActual]

What specifically do you have questions on? See my earlier post in this thread (116) for a general wire setup/schematic. Basically:
- The harness for my rock lights has a relay built into it.
- Power to the relay is going from an always on source (I'm using the trailer hitch wiring, going to the battery direct is probably just as easy)
- I have two sources going into the trigger wire for the relay (one from aux switch, one spliced into the wiring going to the bed light).
- Each source has a diode in line to prevent the aux switch from backfeeding into the bed lights (and vice versa).
- I also put a basic on/off switch in line on the trigger wire going to the bed light so that I could manually disable it completely.

The part you quoted also has the "stays on when pressing unlock 3 times" portion in it. That is a feature of Tazer which has the ability to keep the bed lights on when you spam the unlock button. This is actually probably one the more useful daily convenience features of Tazer that never gets talked about.

1) Any idea what the relay in your harness is? I will need to add that to my current system as I bought individual lights and built my own harnesses and didn't include a relay; just went right to the aux switch.
2) What diodes did you use? I'm assume on my rewiring, I can just physically place those in line at the relay (on the right wires/inputs) wherever I wind up mounting it.
3) Where did you physically tie in to the bed lights? I assume (because I haven't looked) that there must be a harness running back to the bed lights that comes from the switch on the dash; are they power from multiple sources, i.e. from the dash switch and the courtesy or door lights.

I know that may be a bit "ramble-y" but, as I've said, I just haven't dug into it yet to trace wiring, etc. Any insight is appreciated. Do you have any pics of your tie-ins to see which wires you've tapped into.

 

[arskemp]

1) Any idea what the relay in your harness is? I will need to add that to my current system as I bought individual lights and built my own harnesses and didn't include a relay; just went right to the aux switch.
2) What diodes did you use? I'm assume on my rewiring, I can just physically place those in line at the relay (on the right wires/inputs) wherever I wind up mounting it.
3) Where did you physically tie in to the bed lights? I assume (because I haven't looked) that there must be a harness running back to the bed lights that comes from the switch on the dash; are they power from multiple sources, i.e. from the dash switch and the courtesy or door lights.

I know that may be a bit "ramble-y" but, as I've said, I just haven't dug into it yet to trace wiring, etc. Any insight is appreciated. Do you have any pics of your tie-ins to see which wires you've tapped into.

1. It is a JD1912 relay. I replied to another rock lights thread with relay details, so I leave that here:

Did a quick illustration for how MY relay is hooked up:

- The trigger wire on my harness is yellow, and is going to pin 85. However, pin 85 and 86 are interchangeable (aka, some harnesses have 85 tied to ground, and 86 is the trigger wire). Basically, there an internal coil in the relay that can be energized by either direction which will trigger the 87 and 30 to switch on.

- 87 and 30 are also interchangeable for that matter, although your harness likely makes it obvious how it should be wired up.

Do you have a multimeter? The easiest way to test this is to find the ground wire on the harness and use a multimeter to check for continuity. Pull the relay off to access the connector on the harness side, and see which pin has continuity to ground. If it is 86, you will use 85 for the trigger wire, if it is 85, you will use 86 for the trigger wire. You can then use the multimeter to determine which of the 3 wires makes continuity to 85/86.

Also, if you are already using a multimeter, for good measure you can easily check continuity for the all the wires going to the switch. 1 should go to 12V, 1 to ground, and 1 to only a relay pin (the relay trigger wire)

2. I mentioned some automotive diodes in a previous comment in this thread post 115 - https://www.jeepgladiatorforum.com/...e-green-mojave-northern-ca.56331/post-1250025

3. I physically just died into the wire going up to the bed light itself. There. is more space on to look around on the passenger side (since the exhaust is close by on the drivers side). If you get underneath the vehicle you can see a connector roughly at the same height as the bumper, and that 2 wire harness leading up to the bed light itself. I believe is was a red/black wire, with red being the hot wire. I just tapped into the wire around there.

 

[arskemp]

DIY Rack is built! Extremely happy with how it turned out......

I also have some smaller 1.5" legs if I want the rack lowered to just above the tonneau cover (obviously it doesn't open at that height though). .

Long term (~1.5 yr) update on this. Still very happy with it, although soon after using them I found that most of the time I loaded up my bikes I didn't really need access to opening the bed (simply access into the bed was good enough).

Because of this, I moved to using the short legs full time and only using 1 right angle bracket for each corner. A few turns with an allen key and I can slide them up front flush to each other (some of my later photos in this thread and the one below reflect this). I'm still able to open the tonneau cover fully and even strap it open with them in place like that. It's also much easier to load the bikes in at that height (especially now with the lift and 37s).

So far, the only (minor) disappointment has been the coating on the right angle brackets has faded and turned silver. Overall still very pleased with them.

 

[arskemp]

Well, I was trying to be good and not purchase anything for a while but that didn't happen.

Found a deal on a full set of new tube doors locally for $200. Even the instruction manual and accessory bolts were still sealed. Wasn't planning on purchasing tube doors but my impulses got the better of me.

Brand is "Dee Zee". Never heard of them but a search hear turns up a few threads on others who have purchased bed mats from them. Also American made which is a plus.

Overall, they look decently built. Some of the welds could be better, but I can't really complain for the price. I also like the aluminum extrusion channels which seem like a nice way to make the latch adjustable, mounting for door strap, and possibly some other accessories if I think of anything I want to DIY add.

Not sure if I'll get to test fitting them this weekend (on and off rain) but we'll see.

 

[arskemp]

Well, found some time to test fitment. A little finicky to adjust, but happy with the look. Didn't keep them on because some wet weather is coming, but hopefully I'll get some time to fully try them out soon.

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