Light bar wiring

This has probably been covered before and I have searched, but as the search facility is as about as effective as a fart in a thunderstorm I have had to resort to a post.

I'm in the process of constructing a complex lighting bar to go on the Hippo. The one problem I can not find a satisfactory answer for is the best way of getting the wiring into the car.

The best idea I have is to drop the wire loom in between the front and back doors and then taking them through a hole in the door pillar. However, I have two 2.5mm cables, one 1mm cable and two coaxial aerial feeders. This lot ain't going between the doors and I need a better way. Boaring a hole in the roof ain't floating my boat either.

Whats other peeps done?

Cheers,

Dave

I've thought about this before.

If you've got roof racks, i'd try and get the wiring under the front of the roof rail attachment, as you already have a rubber seal around that. Then maybe encorporate a plug somehow into the cover that pops onto the front of the rail. Might require drilling a small hole through the front of the rail (i'm sure it would withstand it though) and a hole under where the roof rail fits, but unless you trap all that cable in a door seal somehow you're going to need to drill somewhere.

Got a brownchurch rack on mine with lots of pretty lights. lol.
I had the same problem, tried a few different things but all caused me issues. In the end i resorted to drilling 2 great big holes in my roof and using a cable gland/gromit to stop the water getting in. its perfect- no leaks. Down side is i'm never gonna be able to take roofrack off without leaving 2 holes in roof. sorry- that wasn't much help was it. :doh:

mono78v said:

Got a brownchurch rack on mine with lots of pretty lights. lol.
I had the same problem, tried a few different things but all caused me issues. In the end i resorted to drilling 2 great big holes in my roof and using a cable gland/gromit to stop the water getting in. its perfect- no leaks. Down side is i'm never gonna be able to take roofrack off without leaving 2 holes in roof. sorry- that wasn't much help was it. :doh:

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Many thanks for your thoughts. Yes it was helpful. It leads me to the conclusion that there is little alternative to the hole in the roof. I am going to try the root through the door seal first until I know that I really want to stick with my construction.

Got it fitted to the car today and tried it out tonight. I have yet to wire the car itself but I have a spare battery in the back and a couple of crock clips. I have to say that it is not as powerful as I though it was going to be but there again I haven't aligned the lights properly yet.

Two options rather than drilling new holes...

1... the aerial. Remove this and there is a gap that is accesible from the other side via the interior courtesy lamp assembly.

2... the roof rail fixing points. There are two threaded holes at each point so even if you have the rails or z roof rack that mounts through them, you could still engineer it so that you run the cables through them and then down the a pillar.

Cheers

Blippie