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DIY Wiring Harness for 4 Roof Rack Lights! How To!

Jacob Linder

"Roadhouse" - Peter Griffin
Joined
February 4, 2016
Messages
254
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City, State
Chickamauga, GA
Year, Model & Trim Level
06' Explorer EB 4x4
Good Evening to All!

Seeing as there is little to no information on making a relay harness.

Being a novice at wiring I spent weeks of reading and learning about all I can about automotive wiring (Excluding speaker/radio wiring) to figure out how to wire up some lights using a relay harness made by myself because the premade harnesses sold online weren't long enough. I have found many helpful hints and found help on how to get done what I need.

First you need--
1. Your wiring. - Chosen according to what your specs on the lights are.
2. Multiple wiring tools, wire strippers, pliers, crimpers, various other tools.
3. Tape, heatshrink, butt connections, spade connections (male and female), various other connectors depending on how you like to wire.
4. in-line fuse, and 4-5 pin relay (30/40 amp) in my case. As well as a 2-3 pin rocker switch.
5. Whatever the hell else you want to wire.

First up is your drawing board. (Credit to BleepinJeep on YouTube for the diagram)
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Once you've found out how to wire I suggest a mock up. This is modified from the previous drawing. I added in 4 Light hook ups instead of just the 1.
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It's a very sloppy wiring job but it's strictly for me to use during my actual wire job to ensure it's being wired correctly. The actual wiring harness will be shown later in the thread when I complete the job.

Pigtailing is an important piece to ensuring a good connection. (Again this is pretty sloppy but you get the point)
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The relay piece. Red is hot, Black is ground, and White is accessory. The ground pigtailed into the relay. Going from the lights, to the relay, pigtailed to lead to the battery, or any acceptable ground.
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And here are the lights that'll be used on the rack. They are 18w x 4 = 72w / 12 = 6 amps. The wiring being rated for 80w meaning the wires are a perfect match.
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This is a rolling thread because I have not yet wired the harness or the lights in yet. It will be updated accordingly. It will also show how to drop the headliner and drilling a hole into a 4th gen. If there is any advice as to what else I need please comment so myself and other can use this thread!
 






So today I had some time to mount up the lights. No wiring yet, just the mounting. But I must say they look really good!
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And my whole truck! I cannot wait to see what these lights can do when I get them wired up. More to come!
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Looks good!

Word of advice: on any wiring that MAY be in contact with the environment, use marine grade heat shrink connectors. They have a glue on the inside to keep their water proof-water resistant property. I also double up on the connectors with marine grade shrink tube just for piece of mind. Its easy to cut the tubing away if you need to unplug the light.
 






So this weekend I finally got around to wiring up the lights. I wish I had taken more pictures because running wire through a headliner of a full optioned EB is a hell driven task. I dropped down only the driver side, just so I could see where I was drilling and so I didn't have to re-attach it all back. I sealed up the hole after with some ultra black RTV and plastic/steelweld. came out pretty okay. No leaks or anything yet. The amount of time it took me to navigate through the airbags, and wires, and moonroof, and just literally anything that can go wrong did. LOL. Well, here are the pictures. If there are any questions to the madness let me know! The harness came out to about 15 FT as well.

 






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