A little lighting to the rear hatch

[TreeTopFlyer]

I wanted to add a little light in the back under the hatch. Picked up some LEDs pre-wired from Oznium. After drilling holes in the interior panels over the last few days for different odds and end projects, drilling 11 more holes seemed a drop in the bucket.

I used a piece of masking tape to try and get a straight line, then marked off the points at 2.5" and centered them on the tape. Came out fairly straight.

Using a 11/32 bit, the LED push in snug and firm. Just a task to wire them all up.

Met in the middle, then wired a disconnect in in case I need to take the trim piece down for LED replacement. Then ran a wire under all the trim, thru the truck, down the inside of the rear pillars, and over to the 12V receptacle as my power tap.

It's not too harsh unless to are directly under it and look up. It adds just a little more rear light than with the interior rear dome. I ran the 12V outlet off my 3rd battery, put a 12V gauge in just for s's & grins to keep an eye on power level. It runs on a switch as well. I bought the gauge to put up front in my underdash pod, but they are way too bright. It was just sitting around so I figured I'd put it to use.

 

[4x4mike]

Nicely done. Do you have any idea of the output lumen wise from your lights?

I've done something similar in my 4Runner. I've got 2 Cree leds in the hatch as well as 2 in each dome light. That combo gives me tons of usable light in the vehicle as well as plenty of spill outside. I love my lights because they are actually useful for something as simple as loading groceries in the evening.

 

[TreeTopFlyer]

The tech guy at oznium, unlike cree, whomever Oznium uses they don't publish their specs. I love cree, they are top notch. Just talked with one of their engineers last week. We have a grow room(not that kind) project with around 20,000 LEDs in it. The inrush on the LED drivers is tripping the breakers. Talking with cree, we found out the mfg of the LEDs we are using aren't using quality components. Cree's inrush is about 3X vs 30X on the drivers we have installed. Anyways, sorry for the tangent.

I will get some footcandle readings tonight for grins.

Did you use a retrofit LED for the dome lights?

 

[4x4mike]

I've purchased all my crees from Cutter. With Cutter you can choose your bin, color, everything. Locally there is a place that sells a lot of aluminum and I by thick strips from them and use them as heat sinks. Each dome has a heatsink and 2 crees mounted to it. Nothing is a drop in retrofit, it's all from scratch. I use the factory housing and wire pigtail but that's it. I buy my drivers from ledsuppy and use the luxdrive buck toot and buck pucks. My hatch light and rear dome are powered at 700ma and the front dome is 350ma. I have a red cree in the front-front dome for night vision powered at 350ma. There are also 6 rock lights mounted to the frame shining down at 500ma. My wife's Subaru also has my homemade dome lights in it which is great because the windows are tinted and the interior is black. The factory domes did next to nothing.