Off-Road Lighting Installation

Things you will need:

• Electrical Tape
• Wire cutters/Strippers
• Soldering Iron
• Screw Drivers/Wrenches
• Offroad Lights
• Lighting Brackets
• Switches
• Fuses
• External Fuse Block
• Relay(s) 1 per pair of lights - recommended

To get started on the installation, you will want to lay everything out and plan on how you want to do it; how you are going to get power to the relay's (if you are using them), and how to get power to your fuse block and switches, You will also want to plan where you are going to mount your switches within the vehicle.

First off you will have to follow all instructions that came with your lighting brackets/bumper and mount all of your lights. Most lights come with 2 wires, a Red wire and a Black wire.The red wire is your Positive Wire (12v), and the black wire is your Grounding Wire (-). You can just leave these wires alone for right now, we will return to them later in the installation.

The next step is to figure out your relays and fuse block set up, This can get really confusing so take it one step at a time. It would be a good idea to have a diagram drawn up with a legend of the wires, their colors and their locations.

First we need to get power to the fuse block. You can run a wire straight from your battery or to the fuse block located within the engine compartment or vehicle. Be careful what you are connecting to when using a fuse block installation due to air bags, and other electronic devices already being wired. Once you have decided which connection route you are going to hook up to, connect that to your external fuse block. (leave fuses out right now).

NOTE: If you are only installing one pair of lights you dont need an external fuse block. You could just buy an inline fuse or use an empty slot in your vehicles existing fuse block. If you are not using relays, please refer to the install instructions that came with your offroad lights.

What is a relay you ask? A relay is basically another switch. It has a heavy duty connector contained within it and when turned on by the switch inside your vehicle, it connects together and sends power to the lights. This saves your switches from running alot of power through them and thus preventing over-heating and potentially melting...now, back to the installation.....

Ground your relay(s) into the chassis. Again, use the diagram that came with your lights to figure out which one is the grounding wire (usually the brown or black wire). Next you will want to run another power wire from the battery or where you decided to wire the first power wire into the cab for you switch(s). From your switch(s) you run this to the Coil Power on the relay, (again look at the diagram to figure out which color this would be). Now, from the Normally Open on your relay(s) you can now wire in the wire in the Positive Wire (12v)on your light(s).

Finally, the last step should be to ground your lights. If you recall, this was the Black wire on your light. You will want to ground your light(s) to a chassis bolt.

NOTE: If there is paint on the bolt or area you are mounting to, you will want to scratch it off. If you fail to do so and ground to a painted surface, you will not get a good ground and therefore, the lights will fail to work properly. This is very important not to forget.

If you have any questions or comments about this write up, please feel free to submit them on the Contact Us page, or you will find various other techinical discussions in the Mojeepin Forums.

Submitted by: Schitzophrynic