The FJ has several holes already available in the structure on the underside of the hood. We’ll be using two of these existing holes to mount the Cyclone LEDs. We don’t want to mount the LEDs too high or too low on the hood, because the angle at which the light will be mounted won’t illuminate the engine area as effectively. There’s a set of holes on the left and right of the hood, midpoint between top and bottom that will work the best. We found that generic, push type panel clips with barbs on the post fit the holes in the hood.
The Cyclone lights have a hole in the center for various mounting applications. We cut a 1” piece of 3M VHB double sided tape, placed it on the back side of the light and cut two slits forming an X over the light’s hole for the panel clip post to poke through. The panel clips hold the lights tight and the VHB tape added another layer of mounting security to hold all of it tight against the hood.
The next step is to wire the lights to the battery. Each light comes with a set of pigtails with bullet terminals attached. We’ll be extending the pigtails with 16 gauge silicone wire. As you can see by the photo the lights are connected in a T shaped harness.
With the lights mounted to the hood we measured to see how much wire we needed to wire both lights together to form the top of the T. We then added a couple of inches to the measurement for some slack. We added butt connectors to the stripped ends of each set of pigtails, connected each butt connector with the measured length of 16 gauge wire and used shrink tubing on the connections. We found the center of the wires and cut them in half. Now we have four cut wires, two positive and two negative. We twisted both positive wires together and crimped on a butt connector. We did the same for the negative wires. Now we have two butt connectors, one positive wire and one negative wire to which we crimp on a length of 16 gauge wire to run to the battery.
We covered both butt connectors in shrink tubing. We routed the wires straight down, then turned them toward the driver’s side hood hinge leaving enough slack to allow for the hood to be opened and closed. At the battery we have a Blue Sea SafetyHub 150 installed on top of the factory fuse box
to which all our accessories are connected. We crimped a ring terminal to the end of the wire, covered it in shrink tube and screwed it to an available terminal on the SafetyHub. We installed a 15 amp ATC fuse. A 10 amp fuse would have been plenty but we didn’t have any. The simple on/off switch will be connected inline with the negative wire coming from the lights. We drilled about a 3/8” hole in the front reinforcement beam near the driver’s turn signal to mount the switch. The switch comes with two stripped wire pigtails. We butt connected and shrink tubed the negative wire from
the lights to one of the pigtails of the switch. The other pigtail we butt connected and shrink tubed and added 16 gauge wire to reach the SafetyHub. We crimped on a ring terminal, wrapped it in shrink tube and screwed it to an available negative terminal on the SafetyHub.
We pressed the switch and now have 800 lumens of light shining down into the dark engine bay. We tidied up all the wiring by covering it in split loom, zip ties and adhesive backed zip tie mounting tabs to secure the split loom on the hood. Enjoy your new hood lights!
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