"Mitch" - The rescued '85

[ostlar]

February 2020

Winters in Norway are pretty dark and depressing, and even though the truck has four H4 bulbs, I wanted more light.

Went online and got a 32" LED-bar, I didn't want to ruin the look of the front of the vehicle, so my plan was to mount it on the roof.
In addition I went to Biltema (scandinavian hardware store) and got eight 24W LED work lights and a couple of generic roof rack kits.



06.02.20

Made the two roof racks into a rectangle rack housing all the lights. Wired the work lights up in zones: front, left, right and rear.
I also wanted to be able to easily remove the rack in case I needed to haul something that needed the roof space, so I wired up two waterproof plugs.


06.02.20


08.02.20

Light's up on the roof, now the only thing left is to have a way to control them.

The center console had a blank metal plate, not sure what it was for, but it was the perfect place for buttons.
However I did not want to ruin the metal plate by drilling 19mm holes in it, so I took a measurement of the original plate, designed a copy in 3D and printed it in black ABS.


08.01.20

I used calipers for fine measurement, but this is the only image I have of the original metal blank plate.


18.04.20

Printed with a powder coated bed (Prusa i3 MK3) so it has this rough texture, hiding the lines from the print.
Came out perfect! The four buttons on the left control the work lights in each direction, and the bottom right activates the LED bar control which turns on the LED bar when high beams are on. The top right button adds in the front work lights in the LED bar control, so I have "ditch lights" in addition to the LED bar. These are handy when driving in overgrown roads in the forest.


09.07.20

Final look, each button has its own light to signal activation. Here the front work LEDs are on. Mint!

I didn't get the buttons until april, so I had to wait a while to finish the project. They were ordered on Aliexpress.

Also, I changed out the bulbs in the speedometer which was actually original Toshiba bulbs (!) with a green filter cap on them, to orange LEDs. I like the orange look better as it is my favorite light color. I kept the original bulbs, still amazes me that they worked 34 years later.


18.02.20