Soldering is definitely a skill that requires practice. I soldered a lot while I was in the Navy as an electrician and it still gives me trouble from time to time. I have got much better at it though.

 

Some more shots. Got the lightbars, and individual heads all mounted.





You can see some of the wiring connections I had to make.



54 circuits, three wires each, on both ends. Plus all the splicing and trying to feed bunches of small gauge wire through 4ft long tubes of heat shrink, to tidy everything up.





If I were a smart guy, I would have just taken the rack off of the truck to do all this, would have been a lot easier. But no one has ever accused me of being smart. Oh well, all I have left to do, is a bit more securing the wiring, and build a small box to house the controller and primary connections.

 

Thanks. Its been a lot of work, that of course only I will ultimately really appreciate. But, that is how I tend to do things, I will spend weeks doing something myself to save a few bucks, rather than just buying something and having it done in a day.

Having access to the shop is nice, but also a curse. Knowing that I have the tools to custom make something, just feeds my tendency to make these projects that much more complex, and take that much longer to do. It generally comes out pretty nice, but I would have been done with this thing about 6 months ago, if it weren't for that. lol.

 

Few more pics.. Pretty much done with this part, other than replacing the individual LEDs with amber ones, on a couple of the rear heads, and repairing one of the blue modules.

 

Not to be too much of a smart *** but my first thought was - wouldn't that be easier to do if the rack wasn't on the Jeep?
Anyway, awesome build! Well done! I'm totally jealous.

 

can't even see the wires in the last couple pics. Very Clean!

 

Yeah, I had said the same thing in one of my recent posts. But, I'm impatient, and want to see what the result will be before I'm done a lot of the time. So, I spent some quality time crawling around on the roof of the Jeep. Oh well, entertains the neighbors.

 

Rack looks beautiful! As a fire cadet and a firefighter's son, I have spent my fair share of time staring at cool lighting setups, but this is by far the coolest one I've seen! I'm currently contemplating the interior LEDs, hatch lights, and HIDs for mine. Have you thought about mounting a Motorola speaker to the lift gate or rack so that when you are stationary as command, you can listen to the scanner? Awesome build sir, I look forward to seeing it hit the road (and the mountains)!

 

I have three options for audio at the rear. The primary setup, is running the audio output from the VHF radios through the truck's stereo system. That gets me plenty of volume to hear it just about anywhere if I crank it up. Downside is it uses more juice, as the Accessory needs to be on, and the amp is drawing power. But great for when I'm driving around with the windows open.

The second, is my radio also has a speaker built into the mic, so I can switch to that output, and hear it when I have the mic connected to the extender I built into the command area. Downside, is it isn't very loud.

Last, and likely to be used most often at the rear, is a secondary speaker/earpiece connector I ran along with the mic extender. I have a small speaker, and earpieces I can connect that way, but I have to put in a switch at the radio output to direct the connection.

 

I personally think the last option would work best!

 

Yeah, I will evaluate it once I get the truck in service, and am really able to use it and see what works best.

 

Can't wait to see it in service!

 

Love the orange

 

Haven't updated much in the last week or so, still largely uninteresting wiring stuff. Started on some of the perimeter emergency lighting.

Again, because I'm cheap, and always want to do things differently, I couldn't just buy some regular hide-away LEDs, and put them in. I want to minimize the footprint of what I put in, and prefer to have more options in the lighting output, so I am running mostly 3 and 5 watt RGB LED's hidden in front and side marker lights, and tail lights.



That gives me the option for basically any color I could want, if I control them right. For now, they will probably just be run as red, Green and Blue, but I may get fancy later.


I am remote mounting the controllers for the front and rear as well, to minimize the length of the wire runs, and it gives me flexibility in just running front or rear if I want.



Beyond that, I started on the buck to mold the mount for the in-dash tablet. I just basically wrapped this in plastic, and covered it with Bondo. After the first coat, it was wrapped in fiberglass tape, and a second coat added.


It's about 1/4" thick now, and will need a few more coats to get it the right thickness and smoothed out. If this doesn't work like I want, then I will likely CNC something out of another material.

 

Still working on molding in the mount for the in dash tablet. Got the initial mold from the tablet done, and cut down.





Then, Bondo'd into the face panel.



Just have to do a ton of sanding and fitting, then drill and mold in the charging cable, and a release strap of some sort.



Hope to have that done today. Then, I am going to get back to doing some real work, and start tearing out the current front end, axle, etc, and get the new axle and suspension swung in.

Have been holding off to try to get access to a lift to do it on, but it just isn't practical to try to move the truck, my tools, the other axle, welder, and all the other parts across town to try to get it done. It will take at least a few days, as I have to figure out and build/mod the frame side track bar bracket, track bar, drag link, etc. I don't want to tie up someone's lift for a week, so crawl around on the floor I will.