rfrogman

I realize there are better quality off-road lights on the market but this is for the few of us cost conscious members that want the same look for less money. I just could not afford the $250.00 for a set of PIAA…may be in the future.

I installed a set of 55 watt Pilot Off-road driving lights on my JK for less than $45 dollars. I got these from a local automotive store along with the 3/8” wire conduit and blue led switch. This kit comes with a wiring harness with a 15 amp fuse. Thanks to other member’s posts within this forum I used the route through the firewall on the driver’s side for the switch wires. This is a very simple circuit and all you have to do is follow the instruction with the kit.

Pilot Off-road lights installed.



Power connection for Pilot Off-road lights and Amateur radio.



Off-road Harness light harness in 3/8 conduit attached to OEM harness across back of engine compartment.



15 AMP fuse attached to inside Drivers fender.



Wiring harness going through firewall.



Blue LED On/Off switch.



Back of Off-road lights.



Finished installation on stock bumper.

deadspot

Looks like you did a decent job on the install! The rocker switch install looks clean. Thanks for the detailed pics on the wiring - helpful to see exactly how others have done it.

priell3

Nice job. Good looking lights. I ran my wiring conduit just like you did for my Hella 500 driving lights and placed the switch in the same spot.

Bamoman

nice write up, clean install and cheap, cant beat it

rfrogman

Thanks guys for the kind words. I can not take credit for the wire routes through the firewall or the location of the On/Off switch. Both ideas came from other member’s post within this forum.

JK-Forum is the best resource for JK specific information on the web!

SCF

I've got some PIAAs at home that were on my TJ, and I've been considering mounting them on the JK. Wondered exactly what is under the front bumper, and could I mount them there. Nice job!

rfrogman

The factory inner front bumper is thin metal but it works fine for light mounts. The top of the plastic outer bumper is about a half inch thick. I started with a pilot hole though the plastic and metal bumpers then drilled the size of the mount bolt. After that was complete I use a door-lock drill bit to cut a one inch hole through the top layer of the plastic bumper so I could put the bottom of the light mounts slightly bellow the top layer of the bumper. This allows a solid mount to the inner metal bumper and made the light look like they are flush with the top of the plastic bumper.

This should work good for your lights.

SCF

Awesome, thanks for the info!

DFW Rusty

Another cheap set of offroad lights is the Hella 5000, my dad has a set on his tj. They are $60 at Walmart!

Hoovis

I also installed the factory fog lights to my Wrangler X once I got my Pure Jeep front bumper. I am posting this to help others who may want other details that I was looking for.

I wanted a switch that mounted flush to the plastic panel left of the steering wheel. This is easy to access (I recommend installing when you have the doors off for easier access), all you need to do is pull off the side plastic panel to get to it. My switch, after shopping around for one I want, and bought at Radio Shack for $4, looks like this:





I bought the Pilot wiring harness off eBay for $10 ($8 plus $2 shipping), and attached the relay to the front drivers side near the bumper just under the hood. There is a hole there that I put a bolt through and tightened with a washer and locking nut. It looks like this:



I bought two packages of 3/8" conduit to hold all the wires. From the above picture, I routed the leads to the lights straight down toward the lights. You will need to attach the adapter to the wiring leads to fit into the factory fog lights. The adapters I bought at Schucks for under $10 ($5 each), and I think they said they are "9005" connections (not the 9006 connection which will not fit). But once you have that connected, you can just plug them into the factory lights which have the female connection of these.

I put all the wires in the conduit and zip tied them to the other wiring in the car. For Wranglers without factory fogs, you can zip tie to the sway bar wires along the bumper (not sure if these are the sway bar wires or the ESP wires, but think they are sway bar wires. Either way, they run along the bumper, and I added these into that conduit, but don't have good pictures to show).

I then took the power wire and the leads to the switch, put them into the conduit and ran them back to the firewall hole. You can see how I zip tied them (my zip ties are clear/white, and not the black factory zip ties). The firewall is the hole just down/right of the green tape which is factory:



Here is a closer shot. My wires and conduit are the ones that "Z" shape, beginning just under the blue-ish dot:



What I think is important, but do not have pictures of, is that I ran the power wire through the firewall with the switch wires. I did this so that I could tap into the ignition, rather than straight to the battery. By doing this, even if I leave the fog lights on after I pull the key out, the lights will still automatically turn off, same as the stereo. With the doors off, the lights go off after about 30 seconds. I suspect they would also go off as soon as you open the door, if the door wires are clipped in.

To do this, you need to run the power lead to something connected to the ignition. I used the left cigarette lighter wires. There is a blue and a black wire. The blue wire is the one I tapped into. By tapping into this with the power wire, instead of hooking it up directly to the battery, the fog lights will automatically turn off when the key is removed (after a short delay). It also allows you to run the fog lights with the high beams on, which you can't do if you use the factory wiring and have them flash your computer.

So this was an advantage, IMO. I don't need to have the headlights on to use the fog lights, and they can also be used with the high beams.

rfrogman had a fabulous write-up, but I was still left with a few questions. My friend, Casey, had the idea of tapping the power into the ignition, and $4 worth of conduit plus a few zip ties makes it all very clean and looks factory (with possibly the exception of the switch, but I found one as close as I could).

So although rfrogman's write-up needed no additions, I thought I'd add my findings in case it helped others go the route I did.