So I have got this pretty sweet looking Adventure Van. And it has this beefy and well made roof rack on the top. One of the things that really catch your eye about the whole project is 4 old school type KC Lights. Now I had these hooked onto the roof rack when I had it installed but they were never hooked up to power. I drove this van around like this for almost a year as I was always intimidated or didn’t know where to start as far as hooking these KC lights up. I mean they came with instructions but I was hung up on installing 2 sets which is 4 lights together.
I could never find any information on how to this. Well if you are in this same boat then look no further as I going to go step by step on how to install 2 sets of KC lights. The steps should be the same if you are adding three sets or 6 total lights as well. In fact, if you are only installing 1 set then this guide will still be helpful as I will talk you through it step by step.
You see, I am not an electrician by trade. Hell, I am not even handy at all. All of these YouTube videos that I was watching were done by men who either had a background in electrical work, worked in an auto mechanics shop or generally just liked to use big words and jargon that any regular ol’…non handy person would not use. So here it is, the guide for us stupid people who are better at other things, that don’t have to do with adjusting the Flux Capacitor (see Back to the Future.)
These steps will work with KC HiLites. These instructions will also work with similar lights and light bars that come with a similar wiring harness and will get you far enough so that you can figure the rest out.
What I first did was set up the lights to ensure I was doing everything correctly and that the lights were getting the proper power and that the switch was working correctly. Once I knew everything was working correctly I moved on to routing and hiding the wires.
First thing to do would be to disconnect the negative terminal of your battery. This is just smart to do anytime you are messing with battery or electrical components.
Next, lay out all your wires in the way they will generally be laid out.
And to be extra safe, you can always take out the fuse from the wiring harness while you are getting everything set up.
- So now that everything is laid out how you are going to want it, start with attaching your relay switch to the automobile body somewhere near the battery. I found a metal piece that already had a bolt in it so that kept me from having to drill any holes. I made sure to have the blades of the relays pointing down to ensure water stays out.
- Next, I attached the ground wire (black wire) coming out of the relay to the body. I attached the ground to the same metal piece and bolt that I used to attach the relay. I made sure to rough the area up with a file first to ensure there was no paint and that my ground would have a good connection.
- I then attached the yellow wire with a ring terminal to the positive battery terminal.
- Then the black ground lead with the ring terminal to the negative battery terminal. Or in my case I just attached the black ground wires to the body of the van/car. Make sure to attach these wires to the metal body or frame of the automobile. If the surface is painted you should file away the paint to ensure a good connection.
- The white wire is used in case you want to have the ability to use low and high beams with your KC lights. I didn’t care about that because if I am going to be turning on my KC’s, all I care about is blasting a bunch of light and don’t feel the need to turn it to low or high. So I just also installed this white wire on the positive battery terminal as well.
**Note. I am mounting 2 sets of KC lights so I pretty much performed the steps from above twice. I had 2 relays, w black ground wires, 2 yellow positive wires and 2 white wires. When possible, to avoid having several wires attached to a point, I used wire connectors such as a T Tap, Butt Splice or other device to attach…..
- Here is where it got interesting when dealing with two sets of lights. The green wires coming from each wiring harness is suppose to lead to the switch that will be inside your dash. I did not want to different switches so I taped one of the green wires into the other green wire to connect them and only had one green wire running to my switch.
- After all of the yellow and white wires are connected to the battery, the black wires are properly grounded, and the two green wires are connected as one, I worked on routing the wires through the hood and zip tying them to keep everything nice and clean. I then was able to slip the wires through the firewall (panel between the engine compartment and passenger compartment) by finding the hole that other wires were thread through.
- Attaching the wires to the switch went like this; the black wire went to the ground or the brass color blade, the white wire which is your supply wire went to the last blade on the switch and the Green wire which is your load went to the center blade.
- At this point you can install the switch in your dash by drilling a ¾” hole into the plastic dash and pressing the switch into the dash. I however skipped this step and decided to just have my switch zip to other components coming out from under the dash.
After all of the following steps have been completed and some have been complete twice if you are wiring two sets of lights, I replaced the fuses in the relays and reconnected the negative battery terminal to supply power.
An issue that I ran into while installing my KC Lights is since I was installing them on top of a roof rack and the van windshields are so much larger than that of a Jeep or SUV, my wiring harness was not long enough for one set to stretch all the way to the battery. There for I purchased a wire harness extender.
I also did not want wires to be running down my windshield and into the hood. One solution of this was to drill a hole through the roof of my van to run the wires through but drilling into the roof did not sound ideal to me so I used these wire hiders which is pretty much just a strip of rubber with a channel to hide the wires in and then a double sided 3M adhesive to attach the wire hiders to the windshield to create a clean look.
