I know there have been a ton of install How-to’s and posts already out there but in all my “down the rabbit hole” searches and reads, I never found anything I fell in love with so I decided to put my own “twist” on some of the installs I did find.
I love the classic look of the KC Daylighters and wanted to install them under the windshield hinge with the goal of still being able to fully open the hood so my search started with trying to find a bracket. That initial search led me to a set of Rough Country mounts but it didn’t take long to realize they were not going to work as you can see by the picture below. The light mounting surface wasn’t big enough for the Daylighter rubber grommet mount so that led me on my own “rabbit hole” adventure to design a custom pair of light mounts to fit the Daylighter’s and integrate a Midland ghost antenna for my MXT275 GMRS radio.
My design goals were the following:
During the design evolution and prototype sample trials, the final design was starting to take shape. The picture below highlights the samples trialed as the design was evolving. Bracket on the right is the finished product for the driver side. The passenger side will be shown later on as it went through a similar process but we used the driver side for the trials since it’s smaller and didn’t use as much material and didn’t take as much time to create.
I used Xometry.com to 3D print the final designs using the MJF process and decided on glass-filled nylon-12 for a material with black dye and vapor smoothing options. In reviewing the material properties, I discovered the material is not UV stable so I decided to paint them using Eastwood’s underhood textured black in a rattle can. They were pretty darn expensive but the quality turned out pretty good and it is 100% custom so hard to complain too much being able to get/make what you want. Because I chose the least expensive shipping method, lead time was a little over 3 weeks which allowed me to focus on the wire harness layout/routing.
As I mentioned earlier, one of my goals was to hide as much of the harness and antenna cable as I could so that led me to removing the cowl panel and looking where I could route things. I found a cavity behind the lower hinge mount fasteners and under the windshield that is open from side-to-side and ended up working perfect for passing the wires through from the “outside” and I decided to use the cavity for routing the antenna cable over to the driver side to separate it as much as I could from the light wires.
The light wire harness came with a relay with a mounting tab so I decided to mount it next to the cabin filter housing and routed the wires from there. I replaced the wire side of the relay with a sealed version for a little better wet protection. Pictures below highlight the relay mounting and side-to-side harness and antenna cable routing.
For passing the signal and accessory feed wires into the cabin, I got a little creative and cut a portion of a 3/16” brake line in half and rounded the end and then taped one wire at a time and pushed them through the existing grommet. To make it a little easier I used a quick spray of dawn dish soap and it went through like butter. I then taped everything up and you can hardly tell its not factory. I then used a separate old school grommet for passing the antenna cable through to keep it separate from the signal wires. From inside the cabin I routed the light signal and accessory wires over to the center of the dash and the antenna wire was routed down to the driver side foot well where I mounted the radio unit.
For the power feed wire, I drilled a hole through the fire wall and used another old school grommet to isolate the convoluted tubing from the sheet metal. I then routed the wire over to the battery for a direct connection.
Now it was finally time to mount the lights, antenna base and brackets to the Jeep. I decided to use a T-section grommet for the antenna cable and intended to use a similar one for the convoluted tubing but ran out of real estate so I ended up trying to add a low point bend hoping water will drip from there and not run in behind the bracket. I had to replace the chrome convoluted tubing that came with lights with the typical black plastic type due to not being able to make as sharp of a bend as I needed for routing through the bracket. I also added a channel to the underside of the passenger side bracket for routing the antenna wire and to keep it out of sight as much as I could.
For the switch, I decided to go the ebay route and get a factory fog lamp version to continue the OEM theme.
And here is the finished product. I haven’t been on the trails yet so still may need to adjust the lights but really like how everything turned out. Also realized how bad I need to clean the windshield so did that the next day (LOL!!).
I love the classic look of the KC Daylighters and wanted to install them under the windshield hinge with the goal of still being able to fully open the hood so my search started with trying to find a bracket. That initial search led me to a set of Rough Country mounts but it didn’t take long to realize they were not going to work as you can see by the picture below. The light mounting surface wasn’t big enough for the Daylighter rubber grommet mount so that led me on my own “rabbit hole” adventure to design a custom pair of light mounts to fit the Daylighter’s and integrate a Midland ghost antenna for my MXT275 GMRS radio.
My design goals were the following:
- Hide as much as possible the light wire harness and radio antenna cable
- OEM looking appearance
- Flatten out the light mounting surface (compared to the Rough Country) to give more downward light adjustability
During the design evolution and prototype sample trials, the final design was starting to take shape. The picture below highlights the samples trialed as the design was evolving. Bracket on the right is the finished product for the driver side. The passenger side will be shown later on as it went through a similar process but we used the driver side for the trials since it’s smaller and didn’t use as much material and didn’t take as much time to create.
I used Xometry.com to 3D print the final designs using the MJF process and decided on glass-filled nylon-12 for a material with black dye and vapor smoothing options. In reviewing the material properties, I discovered the material is not UV stable so I decided to paint them using Eastwood’s underhood textured black in a rattle can. They were pretty darn expensive but the quality turned out pretty good and it is 100% custom so hard to complain too much being able to get/make what you want. Because I chose the least expensive shipping method, lead time was a little over 3 weeks which allowed me to focus on the wire harness layout/routing.
As I mentioned earlier, one of my goals was to hide as much of the harness and antenna cable as I could so that led me to removing the cowl panel and looking where I could route things. I found a cavity behind the lower hinge mount fasteners and under the windshield that is open from side-to-side and ended up working perfect for passing the wires through from the “outside” and I decided to use the cavity for routing the antenna cable over to the driver side to separate it as much as I could from the light wires.
The light wire harness came with a relay with a mounting tab so I decided to mount it next to the cabin filter housing and routed the wires from there. I replaced the wire side of the relay with a sealed version for a little better wet protection. Pictures below highlight the relay mounting and side-to-side harness and antenna cable routing.
For passing the signal and accessory feed wires into the cabin, I got a little creative and cut a portion of a 3/16” brake line in half and rounded the end and then taped one wire at a time and pushed them through the existing grommet. To make it a little easier I used a quick spray of dawn dish soap and it went through like butter. I then taped everything up and you can hardly tell its not factory. I then used a separate old school grommet for passing the antenna cable through to keep it separate from the signal wires. From inside the cabin I routed the light signal and accessory wires over to the center of the dash and the antenna wire was routed down to the driver side foot well where I mounted the radio unit.
For the power feed wire, I drilled a hole through the fire wall and used another old school grommet to isolate the convoluted tubing from the sheet metal. I then routed the wire over to the battery for a direct connection.
Now it was finally time to mount the lights, antenna base and brackets to the Jeep. I decided to use a T-section grommet for the antenna cable and intended to use a similar one for the convoluted tubing but ran out of real estate so I ended up trying to add a low point bend hoping water will drip from there and not run in behind the bracket. I had to replace the chrome convoluted tubing that came with lights with the typical black plastic type due to not being able to make as sharp of a bend as I needed for routing through the bracket. I also added a channel to the underside of the passenger side bracket for routing the antenna wire and to keep it out of sight as much as I could.
For the switch, I decided to go the ebay route and get a factory fog lamp version to continue the OEM theme.
And here is the finished product. I haven’t been on the trails yet so still may need to adjust the lights but really like how everything turned out. Also realized how bad I need to clean the windshield so did that the next day (LOL!!).
