Building an E-Ticket ride - 06 LJ

This doesn’t look like much but it took me hours to wire up the rear lights. I put in a flat tow harness front to back spliced into the lights with diodes.

I converted the hinge upper contact path from a ground to a marker signal so I can have both a third brake light and a license plate light on my spare tire delete license plate light. I plan to add a ground on the tailgate and hope that I get enough ground to allow the small LEDs to work on the plate frame. If not, I will chase a good ground path through the hinges and fasteners.

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E-Ticket said:
This doesn’t look like much but it took me hours to wire up the rear lights. I put in a flat tow harness front to back spliced into the lights with diodes.

I converted the hinge upper contact path from a ground to a marker signal so I can have both a third brake light and a license plate light on my spare tire delete license plate light. I plan to add a ground on the tailgate and hope that I get enough ground to allow the small LEDs to work on the plate frame. If not, I will chase a good ground path through the hinges and fasteners.

View attachment 520582
Click to expand...

You should be able to get ground through the gate and hinges. I have my 3rd brake light and liscense plate both on the spare and did the same thing you did. Been working flawlessly for 4-5 years now.
 
Mike_H said:
You should be able to get ground through the gate and hinges. I have my 3rd brake light and liscense plate both on the spare and did the same thing you did. Been working flawlessly for 4-5 years now.
Click to expand...

Good to know, thanks for the confirmation @Mike_H
 
Wiring, wiring, wiring. Seems like it never ends. I run a nice loom and then find another wire that should have been in it. Getting there with the new head unit, amp, speakers, dome lights, switches l, flat tow stuff and trans temp gage.

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I’ve got the head unit and center of the dash put together. Hopefully I can get the amp in tomorrow.

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I got the amp in today. I am pretty happy with the bracket and outcome. I used a couple of brackets I had in a pile from some old window shades and cut them down to fit over the steering column support bolts. Those attach to a piece of sheet aluminum and the amp is gapped off that with some rubber spacers.

Thankfully I watched a YouTube video on my amp installation in advance and got a warning that the manual wiring diagram is wrong. It has two of the speaker wires flipped positive with negative. I was able to catch that error and avoid a headache.

Here is the speaker harness I made to allow an easier installation up under the dash.

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Test fit of the brackets

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Ready to go in

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Installed

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It also got my front mounted camera installed. I bent up a bracket from some leftover steel from another project using my new press bend brake.

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It mounts under the light bracket on my bull bar. Nice and protected by the bar and hopefully with a clear view of any cliffs I might otherwise drive over!

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I almost finished the flat tow 7 pin harness, batter charger and brake system front end wiring, hopefully tomorrow I can clean that up.
 
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A couple of milestones achieved, all front to back/under body wiring loomed nicely and everything under the hood is done too.

Just a few wiring tasks remain but they all require some other work to be done first, so moving on from electrical for a while.

Left to wire: reverse LEDs in the rear bumper once installed (wires in place); hook up rear camera once bumper is on and I can make a bracket to put the camera in a good spot (harness ready in the rear); and connect a backup wire to the reverse camera from the rear lights.

In the cab left is to run: rear speaker wires on the yet to be reinstalled cage; and hook up the seat heat harnesses to the local plugs at the center console. Also left is hook up the GRMS radio in the center console (power and ground ready); and the remaining OEM center console and seatbelt wiring. I pulled out all of the unused wires from the center console loom and pulled the sub power and ground from it for the GRMS install.

The Aux Beam panel in final form:

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And the firewall penetrations

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The rear bumper went on fine when the bolts were tightened.

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Painting the cage today. Using hammer tone paint, very hard to work with. It is almost like glue. One coat down, one to go. Some of it is looking great but I’ve also got a lot of brush lines so hoping the second coat will get me the intended result.

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I got the console mocked up, likely to come out again when I power up but the wiring is all set to length and secured. Getting the shifter indicator connected was a puzzle, B&M’s directions are lacking detail for that but I figured it out eventually.

A new Kicker sub is sitting in the console too.

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2 years ago when I first removed the transfer case I could not get one of the retaining nuts to to back off. The wrench was blocked by the cat. I got impatient and cut the cat off with a sawzall, not thinking about how to solve that in the future.

Now replacement cats, especially assemblies with all three are a fortune. My pre cats are in good shape so I’ve decided to just delete the aft cat and weld on a straight pipe to mate up with the muffler.

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Once this is in I will take it to a local exhaust shop to finish it with a muffler and rear pipe.
 
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