Nav Light Upgrade

With the dome lights upgraded recently, I was thinking about what to do with the map / nav lights. The white light was going to be too bright for a map light, as the time your eyes take to adjust would be to annoying for night driving / navigation.



Subsequently I thought about military applications; which typically employ a red or green light to reduce glare and loss of natural night vision. With that in mind, I went searching the web for some LED light strips in either red or green. Green seemed to be pretty difficult to find, so I ended up going for red in a small form strip of 2 x 3 LEDs.


2 x 3 Red LED Strip

Both nav lights on.

Cabin with both lights on

FJCC Trasharoo

I'm always sick of carting plastic bags full rubbish from the campsite, back to civilisation. The clinking of beer bottles (amongst other things!) is enough to drive you mad. Solution? A Trasharoo Bag!

We threw the idea around over at FJCC, to not only initiate a typical group buy for Trasharoos, but also going the step further in getting them branded with the club logo. The results of the printed logo were brilliant; the bags are second to none in terms of quality and absolutely cavernous. To be honest; I've never been so keen to pack rubbish up at a campsite!

Interior Light Upgrade

Well it seems I'm going through a bit of an LED fetish phase at the moment. With the MagLite upgrade, Dually D2 reverse light, ARB Adventure Light and saving for a 40" Rigid Industries Light Bar for the roof rack; I might have to go to LED's Anonymous!
To feed my addiction this week, I decided to do what I would call one of the easiest and most valuable upgrades for the FJ; LEDs in the interior dome lights.

Very simple process really; jump on eBay and search for "48 SMD White LED Light Panel". If that's to tricky; I got mine from here: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/48-SMD-White-LED-Light-Panel-T10-Festoon-Ba9s-Dome-12V-/270965668356?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f16cffa04

Since these are from China and I couldn't be sure on the quality, at $3 a panel I just bought 4 of them. 2 for the car and 2 for the spares draw just in case.
The kits come with everything you need; the panel which has a 3M backing strip and three different festoon adapters (as seen in image 1). We'll use the spring loaded one for the FJ.

To install:

1. Pop the clear plastic cover off the dome light using a small flat bladed screwdriver.
2. Make sure the light is turned off and cool; I cooked my fingers on the incandescent the first time I did this!
3. If the incandescent is cool; take it out and put it aside in your spares draw.
4. Insert the spring loaded adapter; positive goes to the side with the tab (you'll know what I mean when you see it) or worst case grab a multimeter and check before hand.
5. Once you've got the spring loaded adapter installed (the trickiest part of the install); plug the LED panel in and test it works.
6. If all has gone well; position the wires into the space the festoon goes into, peel the backing off the sticky strip and attach it.
7. Re-install the plastic cover
8. Admire your handy work!

1. LED plate and components (ebay image)

2. OEM incandescent cab lighting

3. LED light panel installed

Maglite LED Upgrade

I realised the other day (night actually), that LED torches are the wave of the future. I've got an LED headlamp from my days in the SES and my ARB LED Adventure light I got at Xmas 2011; but I always throw my trusty old mini Maglite in my pocket while roaming around camp. This Maglite uses the old school incandecent bulb, which is marginally brighter than a few candles.

Google to the rescue; I soon found overhaul kits for Maglites to convert them to LED. Two brands stood out as the clear leaders in the field; NiteIze and TerraLux. Because I wanted the most lumens from the torch, I went for the TerraLux Extreme upgrade kit which brings the torch to 140 lumens of output.

Its a very simple process to change over to LED; simply replace the bulb with the LED one provided and change out the reflector to the one provided in the kit. The output in comparison to the standard Maglite bulb is unreal, the photos below really don't do it justice.

Standard Maglite bulb.

TerraLux LED upgrade kit

Upgraded Maglite with TerraLux LED bulb.

So if you have a Maglite that you want to give a new lease on life; I'd highly recommend getting an LED upgrade kit.

FJ Sill Plates

Got a good surprise on Saturday morning; a package in the mail. Firstly I was blown away that Aust post even worked on Saturday, secondly the contents of the package; my FJ sill plates.

A buddy over on FJCC had put a group buy together a few months back to get alloy sill plates shipped in from the US. The price was too good and I just couldn't say no.

Installation is one of the simplest I've done on anything for my FJ so far!

1. Removal of the current plastic sill plate. This is actually the most difficult part as the adhesive is pretty good. I used a razor to lift the edge enough to get a good hold, then I could just pull it away.
2. Once the plastic sill plate had been removed, the next step was to clean off the residual adhesive gum. I used a 3M preparation product I had laying around, which is ideal for the purpose. A couple of minutes using this with a soft cloth and the surface was totally clean.
3. Since it was a typical late Autumn day in Canberra (< 12 degrees) I heated the surface up with a heat gun as per the instructions that came with the new sills. Apparently the adhesive works better if the surface temp is warm.
4. With the surface now warm, remove the adhesive backing from the new sill and gently place on the clean paint work. By placing it lightly down, this gives the ability to make adjustments. Once satisfied with the location, press down firmly on the new sill piece to fix it into place.
5. Now all to do is stand back and admire your new bling!

1. Use a razor to lift the corner of the OEM sill guard.

2. Slowly pull the old OEM sill guard away, a heat gun can help.

3. Surface preparation product; perfect for removing the old adhesive residue.

4. Surface completely clean and ready for new sill plate.

5. Sill plate installed; some tasty bling

TRD Workshop Stool

Since I've had nothing new to add to the FJ of late (waiting on bits on order; BajaRack, Warn XP 9.5S winch, etc) I decided to build a new workshop stool.

Using the plans from Miller Welding I built the square frames up to spec. When it came to the legs, I thought 550mm was a little short, so I made mine 700mm. End of the day, it'll come down to what you find comfortable.

For the seat, I used some 15mm hardwood I had laying around from another project, cut it to size (330x330), then rounded the corners and edges off. Once I was happy with that, drilled in 4 x 6mm holes to attach the seat, and countersunk them.

After cleaning up the welds with a grinder I primed the steel then sprayed the frame racing red. The wooden seat was also primed then sprayed satin black.

Once the seat had a couple of coats of paint and dried appropriately, it was time to add the piece de resistance; a TRD decal I had spare. With this centred on the stool seat, I finished it by adding a couple of clear coats to protect everything.

Now for those cheeky bastards wondering "what makes it a TRD stool", the answer besides the sticker is absolutely nothing. But I guess if I get bored I can always add a brake kit and supercharge it!

Additional Switch Panel

I've had a bit of a dilemma of late; more switches to install for accessories, but no where to put them. Originally I had intended to place them on the right hand side panel next to the ignition barrel (silver trim) but on removing the trim, there isn't a great deal of depth, so it wouldn't be any good considering the depth of the Carling Rockers.

So back to the drawing board, I decided a 4 gang plate would fit perfectly in the sunken section behind the transmission. It didn't fit 100% perfectly and needed some additional cutting with a Dremel, but no huge effort required. Once I had the cutout space right, I dropped the gang plate in and epoxied it into place.

I installed three of the custom rockers I had into the gang plate and used a blanking plate for the 4th slot. I have this slot reserved for the LED light bar for the roof rack.

Here's a pretty pic of the final install: