08/05/09 - Roof Lights

I have forgotton to mention that I have added on some roof lights. The car has had roof lights since the earliest pictures I have seen from the previous owners. There has only been one small downside, they were never wired in. In fact, they have no insides. More to the point, what insides they do have has rusted to nothing.

I got some nice stainless steel Wipac lamps from Devon 4x4. I chose stainless so they will not rust. I had already put the wiring and relays in when I re-wired the car but I gave up when I pulled the cover off the original lights to find they are empty.

 

So to fit the new ones I had to make up some brackets. I thought about this for a long time but eventually the solution was simple. I got hold of some exhaust clamps from Halfords along with a strip of metal bar from B&Q (Yes - the big B&Q stores have some limited metal supplies!)

I drilled holes in the flat bar to match the exhaust clamp and an extra hole to take the lamp. It was then a matter of bolting them to the roll cage. I has one issue, the car was too tall to fit back in the garage. This was because the clamps would only fit upside down on my car as the clearance between the rollcage and the car is not great. The bolts on the clamps fouled the car roof. Fitting them upside down meant the lamps were higher than intended. I therefore had to remake the flat bar with a step in it to lower the lamps.

 

The finished thing..parked next to my oldSJ!

Details on how they fix....

There has been some discussion on another forum about fittings like these, especially where roof rack style bars are used instead of roll cage. It has been pointed out by Darrell that suitable fittings can be got from trailer supply specialists, take a look HERE