Ditch lighting without Ditch Lights. An alternative mounting

So I got my ditch lighting project done. I did not want to mount traditional “ditch lights” on the A-pillar locations as I find the view out the front of the Tacoma challenging enough already, especially in tight off road spots. I don’t want light pods or even a hood scoop in the way. I also did not want any light glaring on my silver hood.

At the same time I really wanted lighting to fill in the darkness right beside the front of the truck when navigating tight trails at night, skirting ditches, boulders, holes etc. A secondary motivation was to have lighting to shine sideways into campsites if arriving in a unfamiliar spot at night.

My solution was to mount lighting to my Rhino Rack that is on top of my Century camper shell (canopy/cap). Sideways facing lighting on a rack is not a new idea at all, but I don’t see too many people with ditch-aimed lights on a rack so I thought I’d share this here.

I went to great lengths to experiment with this mounting location to achieve 3 goals with the “ditch lighting” in particular. I was extremely sceptical that a forward facing light, mounted behind the roofline of the cab, could be effective without being annoying, so I did a few test mountings to verify the results.

My goals:

1- I did not want any light coming back into my eyes from my side mirrors or glare off my window sills or hood.

2- I wanted useable light that would be worth the installation effort and clutter on the truck (I’m a bit of a minimalist). I’m not using these lights for high-speed running, but for being slow and careful at night around obstacles. The area I was looking to illuminate is what is right outside the drivers window and forward.

3- I wanted a discreet and clean install. I don’t like a bunch of crap sticking up off my truck to catch on tree branches. I drive some pretty overgrown trails.

I achieved all of these goals reasonably well in my estimation.

I used Baja Designs S2 Sport pods. The “ditch lighting” pods are the dual-pattern beam with the spot lens inboard to minimize wasted light (the beam passes by the side of the truck perfectly). For the side facing lights I used the wide driving pattern. I wired both together to one switch and relay. I won’t be using these on the road so I’m happy with an “all or nothing” lighting approach.

Here are some photos:

The mounting location is below the roof rack. All wiring is internal to the roof rack cross tubing and molded channels in the rack frame:






I’m surprised they work as well as they do, being mounted so far back.


The “ditch lighting” is mounted on the forward corners of the rack. It faces roughly 45 degrees off center and is angled slightly down.


The resulting pattern is shown here (truck has low beam headlights and KC Gravity Amber G4 fogs on in this photo as well). The effect of the ditch lights and side lighting can be seen where the amber light of the fog lighting ends and the white light of the Baja S2 Sports starts:




Note that the hood stays dark:


In the photo below I am standing on my back bumper looking down on the truck. The ditch lights face forward at an angle. You can see the “spot” from the dual combination S2.


Below is the view out the window (there is only a touch of light on the upper edge of the mirror)


It’s a reasonably discreet install:


Here’s the power wiring coming out of my canopy and into the rack.


I keep black covers on the lights in town. You hardly notice they are there:


Have a good Saturday night Tacoma people. Thanks for checking this out.

 

Show the wiring...

 

Nice work! I’m going to move my ditch lights too. I don’t like them on the a pillar either. Plus as mine are they are just pointed straight ahead. So they light up the hood nicely.

 

I did similar on mine, but on the cab rack:



I also have side floods above the passenger doors and light cannons on the bumper. The light cannons are aimed past the high beams. I can get more pics / nighttime pics if anyone's interested.

 

What bumper do you have?

 

SOS Offroad Concepts Streamline:





It's been great.

 

This is fucking awesome, nice job dude

 

This reminds me of that suv that Will Smith was driving in I Am Legend. When he turns on the lights and they’re all mounted on the top on a cargo rack. But it’s bright as day light when he turns them on

 

I will snap some pics of the wire routing later today.

 

Thanks!

 

Yeah. I remember that.

These lights are really bright. Certainly bright enough for my purposes. In the pics you can see, with the camera adjusting its exposure, how much brighter the Baja Pods are than the headlights and fog lamps. However, if you had deep pockets you could go for the S2 “Pros”. These are only the S2 “Sports”, which are not as bright.

The Pros would be cool. Then you could turn everything into daylight, but it might ruin your night vision and be so much brighter than your headlights that you’d need to boost those as well.

 

I really like this! I have wanted side lighting (e.g. alley light/work lights) on my truck for quite some time, but haven't found a decent way to set them up.

I don't think I'll be buy a cap any time soon so I was experimenting with the idea of implementing some low-profile lights into the OEM roof rack bars some how.

That's a super clean setup though very nice work!

 

I’d be interested in some pics.

 

This is awesome! Nice work mate. I might wanna do this one day too. I really like this.

 

So to answer your question. I thought a while about how to get the power into my bed, where I have a power panel mounted in my drivers side cubby. I didn’t want a bunch of wire outside the truck that would snag, and I didn’t want to drill a hole in my fibreglass canopy where it would leak or become fragile. I debated running the wiring down between the back of the cab and the bed but decided against it in the end. The way I chose minimized the wire length outside the truck and put the least amount of dangling wire where it might get damaged.

What I did in the end was drill down through my canopy rack rails. I made the hole the perfect size to thread in a marine waterproof electrical gland and then put a very generous coating of Sikaflex 1A urethane sealant at all possible entry points. Sikaflex 1A is 1000 times better than Silicone. It doesn’t shrink and will stick to anything permanently. Also, if I ever remove the wiring, the only hole in the canopy will be inside the mounting rail and will be invisible and easy to seal.

I have shrouded Sta-Kon quick disconnects at the Rack and at the Canopy wiring junction so I can take the rack or the canopy off if required. Everything is wrapped in engine loom, and the Sta-Kons are potted with silicone grease and wrapped in tape to stave off corrosion.

The trade off with drilling in through the ceiling was I had a very short run along the carpeted ceiling of the canopy. There was no easy way to fasten to carpet, so I used large size ty-wrap mounting plate (saddles) that I glued in place on the carpet with Sikaflex. Not my best work, but it’s all I could come up with that would do the job. It’s mostly outta sight and outta mind anyways.

Some photos:

Wiring bundle entering hole in center of roof rail.


Wiring bundle coming through carpeted ceiling. The black Square is a ty-wrap mounting plate. These are the kind that typically hav double-sided tape, but I’ve glued them to the carpet with Sikaflex. I put the plates on, taped them in place, then let them dry for two days, as Sikaflex can take a while to set.


Wiring bundle run across and down:


I drilled one hole in my bedside to get the bundle back out of the bed to come into the bottom of my bed cubby, which houses the relay and fuse panel for these lights (switch is in cab of course). I also stuck two mounting plates to the bedside using the double-sided tape that they have preinstalled. The wiring bundle here is mostly protected by my Total Chaos bed stiffener, which is just to the left of the photo.



Behind my cubby door is a blue sea fuse panel and an “automotive style” relay controlled by a button in the cab that turns on the lights.


They are my “zombie lights”, just for fun.

 

So, all lights one relay and one switch. The lights are branched at the cubby or inside roof bundle? What I'm asking is how many wires to the roof from cubby.

 

I’d be interested in that setup.

 

I have a dust light (chase light) on my rack as well, that is separately switched. There are three wires coming off the roof. Positive for the dust light, positive for the area lighting, and a common negative. I have the side-facing lights and the ditch facing lights all wired together on one circuit. The Rhino Rack is perfect for wiring as it has hollow areas and deep channels in which to hide well-made splices and wiring. Each light has its own disconnect plug (in case one fails) that tucks neatly into the inside-facing channel above the light. The power for each light is spliced to single “bus” wires that run to the area lighting on both sides of the rack through the hollow support tubes. The connections between the plug whips coming off the lights, and the bus wires are all made with high quality Sta-Kon barrel type butt splices that are potted with silicone grease then sealed with heat shrink.

I wired the entire rack with the rack off the truck, sitting upside down on saw horses. This is the only way to do it. It was more work than I thought it would be to do neatly and properly.

As mentioned, the Rhino rack also holds my dust light / chase light, which is something I found I actually need.

 

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I don’t know if that piece came with the little protector bars or you added them, but that’s pretty slick.