Lights Behind the Grill How To
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Joined: Sep 2009
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From: NE Georgia
Lights Behind the Grill How To
This is how I installed my off road lights behind my grill.
1. Purchased short lengths of metal with predrilled holes from lowes. Also picked up bolts, washers, and nuts to hold everything together a some spray paint to help it blend in.
In hindsight, get bolts with hex heads, not the carriage bolts I picked out there. Didn't even think about it when I bought them. One day when I decide to redo this a bit I'll also swap out the metal pieces for a fully boxed piece that Lowes had instead of the L-bent piece I got. Just didn't feel like shelling out $20 for the fully boxed piece. It would cut down on light vibration in the end though.
2. Here's where everything is going to be mounted. I had stared at this space for two days wondering how I was going to put this together. Ultimately I decided to take out the temperature sensor and use it's factory supplied mounting hole as my connection point for the bar to mount the lights on. After getting everything fabbed up I realized that this put my lights up too high, and not high enough if I mounted them upside down. I then used the hole you can see in the picture below that is below all the wiring on the support bar.
3. Here's a shot of the bar mounted in the hole the temperature sensor was in. Like I said I ultimately move it down to the lower hole, but this gives you an idea for mounting a bar in this location if you're using shorter lights than I did.
4. Once I was sure this was going to work I hit the metal with some black spray paint.
5. Here's a shot of everything put together. I braced my bar I have the lights on by cutting two short lengths of the flat metal I purchased and running it up to the hole the temperature sensor was in. It was easy enough just to relocate the sensor into one of the vacant holes in the metal. This cuts down on most of the vibration and keeps the lights from becoming unlevel.
6. In wiring up the relay I didn't want to run a switch into the cab. I've done this on past trucks and it was always ok, but part of me just didn't want an autozone switch in the cab this time (plus they were out of stock on the green one I wanted). So I decided that I would wire the lights to come on with the high beams. I tapped the proper wire (green and black) and sent that voltage up to the relay to activate it.
7. I used some predrilled factory grounding points to ground everything. This one is on the firewall behind the battery, it's the grounding point for the relay. To ground the actually lights I tied into a grounding point on the front drivers side of the engine bay, just behind the headlight.
8. Now whenever I hit my highs the road in front of me is greeted with lots o light. Ignore the messy looking shop, had to slide everything out of the way to get the truck in there. My daughter wants lights added to her tricycle now...
Overall I'm happy with how it turned out. Like I mentioned to do it again I'd spring for the heavier gauge fully boxed metal. By the end of the week I will hopefully have a honeycomb insert and I'll remove the chrome H bar...it lets most of the light output through, but there is certainly a difference in the light output when the hood is up and it's out of the way. Only thing I didn't put in the write up here was adding an inline fuse to the circuit...I ended up not having one laying around so I'm going to pick one up in the morning and ad it in.
Let me know what you think!
1. Purchased short lengths of metal with predrilled holes from lowes. Also picked up bolts, washers, and nuts to hold everything together a some spray paint to help it blend in.
In hindsight, get bolts with hex heads, not the carriage bolts I picked out there. Didn't even think about it when I bought them. One day when I decide to redo this a bit I'll also swap out the metal pieces for a fully boxed piece that Lowes had instead of the L-bent piece I got. Just didn't feel like shelling out $20 for the fully boxed piece. It would cut down on light vibration in the end though.
2. Here's where everything is going to be mounted. I had stared at this space for two days wondering how I was going to put this together. Ultimately I decided to take out the temperature sensor and use it's factory supplied mounting hole as my connection point for the bar to mount the lights on. After getting everything fabbed up I realized that this put my lights up too high, and not high enough if I mounted them upside down. I then used the hole you can see in the picture below that is below all the wiring on the support bar.
3. Here's a shot of the bar mounted in the hole the temperature sensor was in. Like I said I ultimately move it down to the lower hole, but this gives you an idea for mounting a bar in this location if you're using shorter lights than I did.
4. Once I was sure this was going to work I hit the metal with some black spray paint.
5. Here's a shot of everything put together. I braced my bar I have the lights on by cutting two short lengths of the flat metal I purchased and running it up to the hole the temperature sensor was in. It was easy enough just to relocate the sensor into one of the vacant holes in the metal. This cuts down on most of the vibration and keeps the lights from becoming unlevel.
6. In wiring up the relay I didn't want to run a switch into the cab. I've done this on past trucks and it was always ok, but part of me just didn't want an autozone switch in the cab this time (plus they were out of stock on the green one I wanted). So I decided that I would wire the lights to come on with the high beams. I tapped the proper wire (green and black) and sent that voltage up to the relay to activate it.
7. I used some predrilled factory grounding points to ground everything. This one is on the firewall behind the battery, it's the grounding point for the relay. To ground the actually lights I tied into a grounding point on the front drivers side of the engine bay, just behind the headlight.
8. Now whenever I hit my highs the road in front of me is greeted with lots o light. Ignore the messy looking shop, had to slide everything out of the way to get the truck in there. My daughter wants lights added to her tricycle now...
Overall I'm happy with how it turned out. Like I mentioned to do it again I'd spring for the heavier gauge fully boxed metal. By the end of the week I will hopefully have a honeycomb insert and I'll remove the chrome H bar...it lets most of the light output through, but there is certainly a difference in the light output when the hood is up and it's out of the way. Only thing I didn't put in the write up here was adding an inline fuse to the circuit...I ended up not having one laying around so I'm going to pick one up in the morning and ad it in.
Let me know what you think!
Senior Member
Joined: Mar 2007
Posts: 214
Likes: 0
From: Texas Baby!!
The two of you have given me some good ideas. Now I hope I can get my driving lights AND woo-woo lights all on one bracket.
The previous truck's 'deer slayer' gave a LOT more mounting options!
The previous truck's 'deer slayer' gave a LOT more mounting options!
Junior Member
Joined: May 2014
Posts: 1
Likes: 0
thanks brother did the same as taught to very good contribution is appreciated, not as photo upload I'm new here
