Been wanting to do rock lights for a long time. They make great camp lighting, illuminate the area around the truck when running trails at night, and help me stay relevant with the tuner kids at the end of the block.
I went with eight Baja Designs Amber Rock Lights--one on each corner and two on each side of the frame. Mounting the lights to each of the four corners was straight forward. I drilled holes and bolted them straight into the bumpers, with a 3rd hole for the wire.
For the center lights, I wanted a solution that didnt involve drilling and tapping the frame. So I stole an idea from a rock crawler buddy and used L-brackets and magnets. He said he started using these because when he hard mounted lights, they'd always get ripped off. With magnets, he's had better luck keeping them attached to the vehicle because they move and slide when impacted.
The magnets are super strong and allow mounting location and throw of the lights to be adjusted. If I ever add rock sliders or want to change the configuration, they're easy to move.
The best part is they tuck up high on the frame and are above the lowest parts of the body and sills. Since mounting, Ive driven fast sand washes, rutted dirt roads, and slow rocky trails. They haven't budged.
I used marine insulated duplex 18awg for the whole harness and wired to the EXT1 circuit under the hood with a deutsch connector. Use a heat gun on the insulated ends of the oem wiring and they slide right off.
I used brass open barrel crimps for all the splices including to connect the lights. Running the wires was pretty straightforward. Though if I were going to do it again, I'd build the harness off the car and use deutsch connectors to connect most of the lights to the harness. Trying to do all the crimp splices, run grease and heat shrink while laying under the car seemed faster at the time. But in hindsight was kind of dumb.
All in, I'm pretty happy with how they turned out and think they add some nice functionality, especially around camp at night when I dont want to kill my night vision. I also have amber scene lights on each side of the roof that work well with the rock lights. Need to add some ditch lights to fill out the coverage. But so far, the rock lights get used most often.
