Gaskets for the wires, flat 1" plugs for the round 1" holes, pimped-out metalic flake paint for the bar, and the bottom steel gasket removed from the bottom of the KC HiLiTES means a better more firm fit to the round bar.

The wire kit arrived yesterday ... looking for places to mount the relays and fuse box ... there's not a whole lot of room under the hood.

Brilliant!

Paul, sending you a PM about the relay/fuse box mounting situation.

Thanks for the help.

The '06 looks different in that area and that mounting spot on the firewall is blocked now. The battery is pretty close to a pair of factory fuse boxes. There's a bit of room between the battery and the nearest fuse box for a master 60A fuse but access is going to be difficult. I'm looking at mounting a plate to the mounting bolt for the factory fuse box to mount mine sort of facing the motor.

I might find room under the passenger's seat for a plate with the fuse box and lighting relays if there's room near the amplifier. Might look under the passenger's side kick panel. I like having access to the fuses without breaking a sweat - the relays can get buried.

It's going to be a long weekend between finishing off the lighting and starting in on the alarm system.

Looks sweet man! Alot smoother looking than my black spray painted PVC tubing!! It gets the job done though....you might have a marketing bar on your hands!!!

absolutely disgusting

Very well done

OK. Mechanical done ... save the all important hole in the roof.

So electrical started tonight as its pretty cool here tonight. I'm a retired US Navy Master Chief Electrician's Mate so I know a bit about 'trons.

I need to run a battery fuse box up under the dash for these two sets of lights, a ham radio, and possibly some more junk. The poor alternator can't put out more than about 90 amps so I figure I can't steal any more than about 70 of them and still keep the SUV actually running.

70 amps means 8 gauge wire to the fuse box so I used one of the two mounting posts on the battery positive side and ran 8 gauge cable first to a 60 amp fuse and then along the top of the firewall to an empty grommet hole behind the power steering pump area.



Here's the details on the battery area. I drilled and mounted the 60 amp master fuse to the plastic post that holds one of the two under hood fuse boxes. You want to make these connections very tight as there is a bunch of power flowing through them. Loose connections heat up ... and melt stuff. The battery post had a bit of factory locktite so I put some on after tightening down the connections there.



The grommet side. Put a bit of a drip loop here so that if water follows the wire it doesn't come up against the grommet. (The port side is the driver's side for you land lubbers)



Now to the inside where I mounted the fuse box. I used a gold plated (pimping ain't easy) four fuse box. I'll use 25 amp fuses for the 300 watt (22 amps) and the 260 watt (20 amp) light sets. I put a couple of small screws into the metal here, you don't want anything near your feet sliding around. The four fuses have their outputs running downwards toward the kick panel. I'll mount the lighting relays just above the fuse panel as I'll typically never have to get to them again.



The KC's come with some fairly nice under dash switches but I wanted something a bit better so I ordered up some custom switches from 4x4mods.com for $10 each. To mount them you have to pull the panel out from under the steering wheel. Simple enough - pull out one screw that is visible near the code reader on the starboard side. Then pull the weather stripping out a bit, tug on the trim piece just along side the dash to expose one hidden screw under it (see arrows below). Anybody know what the plug just under the letter "M" in mirror is for? The mirror plug was firmly attached but this second plug was just rattling around loose. :rolleyes:



The plugs come out by lifting four clips with the blade of a knife or flat blade screw driver.



The switches just slide in as perfectly as you could ever want. They're nice and beefy and give a really good postive click. There are LEDs inside to indicate when the lights are on.



It got dark, I got tired and quit for tonight. Next I'll run the 12 gauge (rated for 40 amps) cables along the driver's side kick panel, along the door sill and then up the "B" pillar to the roof line for the ever exciting hole in the roof posting.

Those are some very impressive how-tos. Great set-up guys! I might have to steal your ideas.
Thank you so much!

That's what I put them out here for ... we each build from each other's experiences. I'm not the most knowledgeable when it comes to tires, suspension, and drive train so I'll be stealing ideas from those RKIs.

Get ready ...



Come to find that my 25 foot lenght of 12 gauge wire is about three feet short as I really need two lenghts of about 14 feet and one shorter length of about five feet for the grounds in 8 gauge.

Managed to put my ham radio in under the passenger's seat next to the Rockford Fosgate amplifier but that's another thread.

Went to the Nissan new car clinic this morning and started drilling holes in the roof this afternoon. I measured twice and then a third time. They're under the gasket material of the roof rack and come up into the rack's frame in a void.



It doesn't rain here much but still I siliconed the holes inside and out. Silicone is cheap, water damage isn't!



The wires make a 90 degree turn and then through three more holes. There's a 12 gauge wire for the driving lights, one for the pencil beams, and an 8 gauage ground wire that drops down to a heavy mounting bolt at the base of the "B" pillar.



I'm waiting on the quick release plugs that I ordered earlier this week. They're called PowerPoles and are good for 45 amps each. Finally one last picture with the most recent bush fire's smoke in the background. While I was working it was snowing ash on me. I fired up the light toggle switches and they look pretty nice.

I connected the lights up using some European barrier strips just to try them out tonight ... very impressive.

That looks awesome.

You might like to relabel your "powersteering pump" to "brake booster" though.

Good job and well thought out.

which ham radio are you running... almost looks like my Kenwood TMV7A... which I thoroughly enjoy... and the remote mount is just icing on the cake.

shawn

You didn't have any trouble screwing the roof rack bolts back on? Unfortunately, I tried going that route but 2 of them would not go back in...I might have to take it in to the dealer and have them fix that, because it won't seal right if they don't go all the way in. This sucks. For now my wire is going in the door. I was hoping I wouldn't have that problem, I guess it's hit and miss because I know I'm not the only one.

Done ... told you I wasn't good with the moving parts :p

That's a Yaesu 8800R with crossband repeat ability. I'm just a technician's class as I can't learn morse code to save my life. I passed the technical element for my general license over a year ago when the FCC was making noises like they were going to drop the code requirement like many other nations have. I've since learned that I can send code rather than receive it ... once I get to my doctor to document my military related hearing loss.

I've got a couple of 2M/440 Mhz antennas coming ... but that's another post.

No they all went back in twice without an issue. The factory uses a blue locktite material to seal them in there. What I did do is squirt a dab of silicone into each hole to seal it up and to lubicate the screw. They went in nice and easy actually. The way they're tack welded from below it looks like they're designed to have the screws removed.

I have heard others chat here about snapping off the nuts so I was double careful. My plans call for the other side to come off to run the ham radio antenna up the other side.

Mine definitely don't look like they are tack welded underneath. They seem to be some type of captive fastener. There is not a single weld on them. Maybe they realized the problem sometime through production and decided to start tack welding.

I'm only guessing on the weld as they were blind to me but I didn't see anything gripping the top and pushing up from the bottom. It was a tight fit between the headliner and the roof. I slid a piece of scrap metal up in there to prevent the drill bits from going right though the fabric. My hand was just barely able to squeeze inside and push the wires up though the holes from the bottom.

Could they be rivnuts?

Rivnuts

WOW...........thats all I can say!!!!!

Looks like that or something very similar. They are finely threaded screws and the torque used to install them was crazy, they were tough to get off. I think the nuts don't have enough strength to stay captive with that amount, which is why they are shearing off. Stupid Nissan.

Here's a close up of the keeper pins:



And the back giving the overall effect:

looks like you modeled this up in solidworks... could you post the model files on here???