Hella 500 Series Off Road Lights

• CHOICES

There sure are a lot of choice's when it comes to lights, HID are too pricey and some lights look great but do they perform. I decided to go with Hella's on this build, I had PIAA's on one of my Ram's and melted may wiring harnesses back in the 80's when we ran Hella H-4's on our lowered mini trucks and exceed the wattage on the head lights and driving lights.

• SELECTIONS

After looking initially at the Pilot NV-200C since they had an aggressive chrome rock guard built in. The lowest price I could find them online was an Ebay store called On Any Sunday or something similar, I only purchased one set figuring they would go on the bumper winch mount. After searching more and more I stumbled across the Hella 500's and at $40 a pair I figured why not go with the real thing. To date I have eight of the Hella 500's on my Trail Tracker and have listed the lights along with the wiring for the dual battery, multi switch and light mounts listed in the I Recommend widgets on the side of this blog.

• WIRING - Fuse Block

I read up on the Painless Wiring harness 70217 and went with it over the others based on a few facts: for $90 bucks it had 7 fuses or each set of lights, wires (duh?), its is weather resistant, circuit breakers and just made hooking up the auxiliary battery a snap and looked clean.
MANUAL - read here
The main reason for selecting this harness is that it ties into your factory wiring and detects when the key is on, then it powers up these accessories, this way when you shut down your vehicle all the off road lights power down as well.

• WIRING - Switches

To date I have not been able to locate smaller push button on switches to fit either the center console, dash or wiper/mirror cluster to run additional driving lights. One neat low cost idea I found at a Discount Auto parts made by Pilot was a 4 way GEL panel switch for $25 bucks. Considering that it controls four light and is high tech looking it fit the bill for me just fine. - see the I Recommend Widget to purchase these. I plan on mounting mine to the head liner above the mirror between the visors, a thin slice out of view will allow access for the ribbon cable and I figured I would glue it to a small plastic or metal backing that would be glued as well to the headliner. This would help give driver feedback when pressing the switches. Since I have four pairs of lights on the roof, this four panel switch should work just fine.
I was able to locate three mouse switches on eBay for under $10 bucks which I use to control the side and rear safari rack lights. I have attached these light to the small tray above the center AC vents with both double sided tape and small stove bolts giving them a solid feel. I still need a switch for the under bumper fog lights and Pilot lights mounted to the winch guard, those will go above the stereo with the Crutchfiled supplied install kit and two driving light switches I purchased off eBay. This entire build is based off parts bought online, from far away and locally, the power of the Internet.

• POWER

For all the lights I am considering going either with an isolator or with a local alternator shop I found online and have been communicating with about beefing up my alternator, a few Google searches and it appears I have a 70 to 75 amp alternator. The local shop said it is about a buck and amp for 150 amp rebuilds. I am tempted to buy one from the junk yard or online, and then have them rebuild the worse of the two so I have one to swap out, my whole build is based on the truck being replaceable and most parts would carry over should I buy another Grand Vitara or Tracker.
I have a small stock battery up front for now, the Optima red tops is a bit pricey so I will wait until mine fails. If I do the isolator I need to have matching batteries and am thinking about building system to accommodate this over time.
The roof lights and rear winch will run off a Deep Cycle auxiliary battery I have left over from my failed canoe expedition. It will be mounted in the rear with my future rear roll bar helping provide its mount, I have also added a solar battery charger and maintainer listed on this site to keep it powered, careful some only maintain and some charge the battery. The deep cycle provides power to the Painless Wiring harness that has the fuse block for the off road lights. I decided to use a deep cycle since A. I already had it and B. I did not have to run a battery isolator and expensive battery wires to the rear thus increasing the cost of this build. The rear UTV winch has a 4,000 pound pull strength, plus the wiring harness was just long enough to reach. (see winch listed in side boxes)