OK the UPS guy was good to me today and delivered the Onlinemetals.com and KC HiLiTES. Bad news. In the past I have had driving lights where the bolt ran down though the light cup and down into the bumper. KC's don't do that meaning my 4.5" bolts aren't going to work with KC's but will likely work with other less over-priced lights. The KC lights have a second cup that is pop-riveted with five rivets to the bottom of the larger light cup. The bolt is held captive inside that smaller cup and can't be removed without pulling five pop rivets ... which I could do but what a pain.

So looking at my bar I've decided to drill a 1/2" hole on top and a 1" hole on the bottom. This will allow a deep 3/4" socket to reach the bottom of the short KC bolt and make the bottom line of the light bar "cleaner". It will also give me a bit drain hole incase I ever get wet off road . The large 1 inch holes will also allow me to snake the power cables down the pipe's interior with ease.

Each light will have it's chrome power lead enter the pipe through a rubber gasket and then attach to one of two heavy gauge power cables fed from the KC relay. Parts-express.com order for the power leads ought to arrive tomorrow. My 4x4mods.com light switches ought to arrive next week early.

So I dusted off the metal shop and spent an hour looking things over and starting on the first bits. I pulled off the roof storage and verified my initial measurements.



The grade 8 4.5" bolts are shown closer here and arn't going to be used. I throw them in the repair pack for the field.



The 2" solid aluminum rods came cut very nicely from onlinemetals.com and I just basically spent 15 minutes polishing them with 80 and then 180 sandpaper to get them to fit inside the 2" tube. It's a nice tight fit and I think the 3" lenght is right and will give a good balance of strenght and lightness.



Next I cut the first of the "A" brackets lenght-wise so that the shorter leg will fit the width of the roof rack's mounting ridge from the removed roof storage rack.



Looking at the thing I'm going to mount it a bit further back than planned "giving up" the first factory mounting screw. Those things are pretty small diameter and I think I'll be better off with two of my own bolts and one factory screw rather than the other way around.



Looking at the space between the bar and the wind deflector I might add a bit of an aluminum strip in there to fill the hole. I'll use that first, most forward hole holding the alumimum plate in place.

I'm at the point where I need to cut the sections of the longer part of the bracket out in the correct position for the light bar. I'm looking at where it would look and fit bet along that 10" lenght. I want it kind of foward but a bit back in the "wind stream" off of the wind deflector. Come daylight I'll have another look at it.

Engineer three times, measure twice, cut once!