How to Install LED Light Pods

Hey friends. It's Len here at 1A Auto. Today we're working on our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500, and we're going to be doing something super cool, installing some LED pod lights. Going to be super easy. I can do it, and you can do it too. As always, if you need these or any other part, you can always check us out at 1Aauto.com. Thanks.

Okay friends, so we have a kit. You can get a light pod, a little mounting bracket, and all your stuff right here. The only problem that I have with this wiring harness is, it's set up for one pod. Well that's cool and everything, but I don't want to run a whole wiring harness, two of them running straight up and down the whole truck. Why do that?

So I'm going to show you something very basic. We're going to splice in another end here, and it's going to be great. Because then we can use two pods. One for each side of the bumper under there. It's going to be awesome. Let's do it.

All right, let's open up this harness here. We have our battery connections. Positive, negative. We don't have to tell you. The positive has a built in fuse right here. It comes with a fuse right in it. If you needed to replace it down the line, just grab it, pull it right out. Replace it with another 30. We'll put that back in. Close this back up. It keeps it nice and water tight. Would I say it's waterproof? No, I wouldn't.

To continue, we've got our relay. This is super important. We'll follow this down. We'll take one of them. We followed it down. We have a connector here, which is great. Because on this side we have a switch. If you wanted to, just squeeze this tab. You can separate this. Have your switch inside your vehicle, obviously. Then you can run your wire, and you don't have to worry about trying to run this through a small hole. Okay?

Find the other end. All the way down here. Ta-dah. We have the end that goes into the light pod port. Right there. Okay? Like I said before, this whole wiring harness right here only comes for one light pod. Well that's great and everything, but who wants just one light pod in the back? Or wherever you're putting it. Maybe you're putting it in the front or the side. You do you, Boo Boo. Whatever.

We'll set the switch aside. What we did is, we've got another one with the light pod connector on there. Just like this, okay? We've got plenty of wiring, because we're going to go from one side of the bumper, all the way over to the other. Then what we're going to do, we're going to take this wiring harness. We're going to cut into it, and I'll show you how we're going to splice in some new wires so we can have dual pods mounted into the vehicle.

I just rolled it back up a little bit here, just so we don't have a giant mess while we're trying to work. Okay? This is much easier to deal with. What we're going to do is, we're going to come down this way. Maybe right about here. We don't have to go all the way super close to the connector. We'll go right about here. I'm going to cut it. I'm going to use some cutters. Just like that. Simple razor blade. Cut away from yourself obviously. Never cut towards yourself if you can avoid it. Grab these wires. There we are.

Wire strippers. Right here. Give it a nice little twist. I kind of like to maybe have a bit more than that. I'll try one more time. I'm going to go with this one. That's exactly how I want it. I'm going to do the same to this one. Give it a little twist. Very nice. We'll set this aside, and we'll continue.

Here we are. We'll set this one aside. Got two ready. We'll have our little extension cable we made here. Do the same for this one. We're going to take our two sets of wires that have the pod connectors. We're going to have the other set aside. We don't need that right now. We're using the pod connector ones. Black to black. Let's put them right up against each other. Give them a nice little twist. Doesn't have to be anything too crazy. This is just to get them up against each other.

We're going to use a connector that looks like this. It's got a single wire side, and a nice big double wire side. That's going to be great, because we're going to slide this right onto the double wire. Try to push it in there as far as we can. This is super important. You need to make sure that you get the metal parts of the wires down very deep inside there. That's in there as far as we can get it. Now we're just going to crimp this down, right up here. I'll give this a nice little crimp. Okay, I'm going to give this a little tug.

Sometimes with these, the inside just really isn't the best. I mean, I didn't make it, so I can't really testify to quality. Set that aside. Let's try something a little different. We'll go with one of these. Essentially we're just going to put our wires inside. They're going to need to be a little bit shorter, I'm sure. But this just presses inside here. Just twist as you push. That's nice.

I'm going to crimp it down, right in the yellow there. It's important to make sure you've got a little bit of metal on the inside there, coming up past where your crimpers are going to be. Just going to crimp this down. Give it a nice little tug. Yes. That's much better. You always want to make sure you give it a tug. Because if you have a loose connection there, what's going to happen with your LEDs driving down the road? Flick flick flick flick. Okay? Do the same to this one.

Okay, so this wiring that goes from the front, all the way up by the battery, down and under along the frame, up along here, and all the way over to there, just isn't quite long enough. That's bound to happen. Because you know why? Maybe they weren't really planning on people putting pods in the back of their truck, or car, or whatever you're working on.

So we're just going to do something very simple. We're going to get ourselves a little bit of extension wire. We're going to go with approximately the same gauge wire as what we have. The closest we can get. We'll move along from there.

All right, so we grabbed ourselves some extension wire. Just going to come right over here. This wiring, it's good to notice, you've got writing on one side, and no writing on the other side. So you can pick which side you want to be positive, and then just remember it. We'll go with writing, positive. Take it, put it right inside the connector. Get it in there as far as you can. It's super important to make a great connection here, okay? it's going to go right like this. Give her a nice tug. That feels great.

Let's do this one. This is the plain old black wire, and it's going into the negative. We have both of our black, negative wires for our pods, going to the plain old black part of the extension wire. Both of our red extensions for the pod there go to the other side. We'll just trim off this. This one. There we are. We're going to go with something as simple as a little bit of electrical tape here.

It would be nice if you can get some shrink wrap over these. If you have access to that, then that's great. For me, I'm just going to use a little bit of electrical tape. It's something that everybody has access to. Well, I would like to think most people have access to electrical tape. I don't want to say everybody, because how do I know? We're going to make sure that these two split off.

Just rip that off. It rips very easily. Here we are. We have no exposed wire. The connector is nice and covered up. It's not waterproof, it's water resistant. It is what it is. Let's continue.

All right, so we have the forward end of the harness here. This is where we're going to connect to the battery. We'll get our fuse and everything else. We're going to connect it over onto the battery, bring it down, and along the frame.

All right, so we've got our relay. Just going to put a wire tie through here. You could use a nut and bolt if you'd like. I just went with a wire tie, just because it's something that most people have around. Extra nuts and bolts, maybe they've got to go to a hardware store and get some. It's not super integral. This is very tight. You just want it to be snug, so it can't wobble around and bonk off of things.

Of course you just trim off the extra. Make sure you don't cut any other wires that are around there. There we go. We're going to take our switch off. Just squeeze that, pull this apart. This is going to go inside the cab, and we're going to run this through there, like I said before. Just put this on the seat. See if I can come, let's see. I want to go underneath these wires. Just like this. Then see if I can push it through here. Okay. There it is. Awesome.

Now we're going to get underneath the dash, inside the cab. We'll find where this is. When it comes time to mounting the switch, it's going to be completely your prerogative where you want to put it inside your cab. It's your truck, you do you, Boo Boo. I'm just trying to show you how to wire it up, and then you can take it from there. Okay?

Okay, so we're underneath the dash. Now at this point, like I said before, you can run this any way you want to run it. All right? I'm just going to show you, we're going to connect this in. Just like that. If you wanted to, you could take off this panel right here. There's just a couple screws, and the top part just kind of slides out. It has little prongs, pitons. You can put it up here, or over here.

Give yourself a nice little box that'll make it so you can have multiple switches if you want to have multiple LEDs. That would be nice. But anyway, we've got our switch in here. Once it's hooked up to the battery, this will function.

Okay, so we're at the negative battery terminal. We're going to loosen up this nut. Using my 13. Give this a little wiggle. There we are. We'll set this aside, just like that. Now we have no battery voltage going to the truck, and we can continue with our electrical installation.

Right over here, do the same to this one. Except we're not going to remove the whole terminal. What I like to do if I have wires like this, I like to clean them up. So I'm going to use a tool. I'll show you what it looks like. It's available at 1Aauto.com. Just grab that. Maybe with, there we go. Come on. Here it is.

We're going to clean this all up, so that way there we have a great area for this to connect onto. Of course it's going to be a better area to connect onto the battery.

We've got this tool right here. It's got a little sanding disc on it. This is available at 1Aauto.com, like I said. We're just going to clean this up. Got a nice surface there. Do the same to the other side, of course. That looks beautiful. I think the truck's going to be extra happy about this. I hear it thanking me now. "Thanks, Len". You're welcome, truck. Anything for you.

Just get this wire up on here. You can set it so it goes down and under. You can set it however you want. Maybe I will. Maybe I'll bring it down and under here. Might make it look a little nicer. Get that out of there. It's following me. Oops. It's distracting me is what it's doing. Just like that, okay? Snug this up. Give everything a nice wiggle. Not bad.

Okay, we'll come over to this side. We're going to remove this nut as well. Just got a little snug right there at the end, of course. I'm going to try to keep this away from the negative terminal. That way we're not making a connection and then taking it back of, and making it again, and on and so on. Set that aside. All right, let's get all this out of here. We're going to clean all these up, just like we did the other side, and then we'll continue.

Okay, so it's time to reconnect the negative battery terminal. Put it right on. Try to get it down there as far as you can. That's decent. Okay, now what you need to think about when you're reconnecting wires like this is, what would be the most important wire? Obviously a nice big thick wire is probably going to be drawing a lot of energy. You want that to be as close to the terminal as you can. Just put that there.

I'm going to go with the next biggest wire. Looks like it's this one. Just like that. You can set it however you want. You can stack them up on top of each other. Facing this way, that way. Whatever you want to do. It's kind of your prerogative. Just try to get it so it goes down like that. All right, what's next? Let's do the light bar. Bring it around the battery. Awesome. That on there. Then we have this one other little squirrelly wire here. What's it go to? We could chase it down and find out. But I'm not going to worry about it right this second.

You need to make sure that all the metal areas are touching, so they all have good contact points against each other. Just going to try to get this on there. All the terminal ends are nice and clean, so that's good. This looks decent. Not bad. The terminal doesn't move around on the battery, that's super important. You need to make sure that you have a good connection. That's great.

I'm just going to put a little bit of silicone inside there, just to help keep moisture out. It would be nice if there was some sort of, maybe a heat shrink that would fit over it. But to find a heat shrink that would fit over this big part, and then a little teeny wire, I don't think that there's any heat shrink that's going to shrink like that. So we'll just do our best, and fill it in with a little bit of dielectric. For the purpose of the video, we'll just say that that's good. I can fix that up a little bit better later.

All right. We just want to test to make sure that it's going to work. I just twisted the wires together here. I did the positive to the red obviously, for positive. Then vice versa for the ground. We've got our little Y here that we made. Connect them into our pods. We're going to aim them away from the camera, and let's give them a try. You just wan to make sure that your wires don't touch in case they move around. Oh yeah, those are super bright. That's going to be great.

We're just going to take these back apart. They're just twisted together, so nothing too crazy. There we are. Awesome. Make sure that these are separated. All right, now we're just going to run this down along the wheel well here. Down along the outside of the frame of the vehicle.

Okay, we're just going to take our wire. Go right up along all this right here, and we'll be sure to use some wire ties to hold it together. Cool, all right. At this point we're going to have to add our extension. We might as well do that while we can work on it down at a nice working level. We've got our extension wire here. I'm going to use a little bit of heat shrink. Just going to slide it right over that, so it's ready for us.

Twist this up. Take our connector. This has a hole on this side, a hole on that side. Slide that right in. Give it a nice couple twists there. Grab our crimper. Make sure we've got it in the right spot. Give it a nice squeeze. Give her a tuck. Yes. Let's do the same to this one.

We're going to take the wire with the writing. We're going to go right to our positive wire. Make sure this is twisted. It is. It looks great. Slide it in there. Give it a couple little twists as you push. We're going to crimp it in, right about there. Oh yeah. Doesn't get much better than that. This one looks like it needs another twist.

We're going to make sure that we have our connector right in the middle of our heat shrink. Just give it a little squeeze. I can see where it is. Use a little mini torch here. Be careful, because of course it's a flame and it's going to be hot. Start in the center, then work your way to one end or the other. Just keep moving the flame around. It's all about heat. It's not about starting a fire or anything like that.

I start in the middle just because it holds it for me, and then I don't have to worry about it sliding around. Let's bring the rest of the cable up through here. Obviously I don't want to put a tug on any of my wiring here.

Okay. Now for the rest of this, it's just going to pretty much run along the frame. We'll be using some wire ties, just to make sure that it stays where we put it. But for now, just going to go like this. Going to make sure it's on the right side of the leaf spring. It's going to come up along here, up over the top of this. It's not going to stay here, by the way. It's just where it is for now. Perfect.

All right, so we're all the way out back. We've got one for one pod, and then the other one for the other pod. Perfect. We've got our wiring pretty much where we want it. It's not completely secured yet, but it is ran. Now we're going to get ready to start hooking up the pods. Our bumper already has a hole. If yours doesn't, or wherever it is you're mounting it to, you're going to need to make a hole that is at least the size of this bolt. Once you have that, you can continue.

We're just going to try to put the nut right onto the magnet here. Try to guide it in. It has to go above the bracket, and in between those little thins. Something like that. Take our bolt, try to see if we can get it started in. There we are, there's one. Do the same to the other side. Get it to lay down flat. Once it's laying down flat in the groove, the groove itself actually holds it, so that's nice. Cool.

We've got this so it can move around, which is great. We can go ahead and snug these up a little bit closer. But we'll leave them a little bit loose so we can adjust the height where they're aiming. All right, so we're just going to take the bolt. Go right up through the bracket here. Through the pad. We've got our locking washer and our nut. We're going to go right to the top. Get the washer up on there first, of course. Then the nut. There we are.

We'll just get it finger tight. We're going to go do the other side. Keep it loose so we can figure out which way we want it aiming. Then we'll go ahead and snug everything up at that point.

Okay, we had a little extra wire, so I just wire tied it together. Make sure it's nice and snug. Now I'm going to take the excess and I'm going to just bring it up to this wire that's already up inside the vehicle. I'm going to wire tie it right to that too. Because well, why not? The reason for that is just to keep it out of the way so it doesn't come bobbling around and cause an issue.

We'll take this. You can do whatever you want with this, just to make it so it's not going to be hanging around anywhere that it could get caught. See if I can go through my bumper. Right up, something like that. That's pretty great. I'm going to connect this in. Okay, we've got our little thumb connector area. Then right here, matches up. Just squeeze it together. Give it a nice tug. That feels good. We'll make sure that we secure this as well in one second.

We're going to come across. We're going to do the same thing for this side. We're going to get this out of here, and that up out of there. Come right through the hole that I have in the bumper here. Very nice. I'm going to try to leave plenty of slack, so that way, if I want to move this around, I'm not going to be putting any tugs on any wiring.

I'll bring this down. I'm going to connect it the same way as I connected the other one. There it is. Very cool. Now we'll just secure it to anything we can under here. If you find any spots on the frame that you could put a wire tie to, that would be helpful. Just make sure that you don't have any wiring hanging down, or it could get caught on anything and cause a tug.

Once you have this adjusted to the angle that you want it, side to side that is, you're just going to snug this up. Just like that. That makes it so it can't go twisty twist. Do the same to the other side. To adjust the up and down, set it to where you want it. Whether you want it aiming straight at the ground for ground effects, or to the front if you're working under your vehicle. Just go ahead and snug this up with the Allen tool that's provided to you.

To adjust the up and down, you're just going to adjust this screw right here. Tighten it up with the Allen tool provided. Like I said, this is once you figure out what level you want it at, okay? Very nice. Doesn't shake around. I love it. Let's do the other side.

Yeah.

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