Wow boys and girls,
I thought there might be some interest in this, but I am getting lots of
hits (PM's) on this one ... makes it worthwhile to help out some buds.
1st of all .... the offer of free brackets is good to anyone who would
like to do this mod .... as long as I don't get too overwhelmed.
FYI, The reason I have access to all the raw parts as that I had designed
a new style of part and these all became obsolete throw aways. Cool for us!
I did a wire harness post back in May? and fabbed a custom bracket
using 1 of these for that also.
Anyways, I'll go into a few more details on this project. hopefully it will
help you do your project. feel free to quit reading if you get bored and fall
asleep. This will probably be wordy.
1) light selection
I tried a couple of foreign makes of combo map lights/sunglass holders
I had purchased on e-bay (Toyota and Honda). What I found was that
you have about 1 3/4 " total height availaible for an "insert" or "recessed"
type console. Most of the "combo" types need a little more room. So I
ground down some of the features and pretty soon they could fit, but
the biggest problem was the shape of the console. The FJ headliner
is concave shape and it seemed most of the "combos" I looked at were
either convex or flat. Probably not all bad, but I am a picky bastard (oops
can you say that here?) and if it was not going to look correct, it wasn't
going in my Cruiser. anyways, try to find something you like that has a
slight concave shape and make sure it is not more than about 1 3/4" in
recessed depth (look out for the opening arc also). So, due to the above, I
gave up on doing the combo because I was getting tired of buying "throw
aways". The next issue I found was some of the foreign makes must have
some strange circuitry, I could not get them to function correctly on
normal "independant" 12 volts. I chose to go the american route due to
basic electrical simplicity. I had a question on the weight of a fixture ....
basically any weight would be fine. On my mount, the weight is supported by
the 2 bracket mounting screws and it is very solid, however, the cross
member is thin gauge sheet metal and there is some flex. Now if you find a
heavier fixture or even a different shape of a fixture, an option would be to
make a bracket to attach to the crossmember (as I did) but on the oposite
end, use some industrial strength epoxy and glue the bracket to the roof
and you will have all the support you need. Choose a fixture with the type
of lights you want. I wanted 3 features: another "door" light, I wanted
map lights, and the lights needed to swivel. The ol GM fixture fit all my
criteria, I'm sure you guys will find others.
Going to let the dog out, be right back with step #2 "bracket design 101".
Oops, my wife wants to watch a movie, may be gone a little longer...
Re: Overhead map light install (lots of pics and details)
err
Linear Mode
