Wednesday, January 6, 2016

LED Lightbar on 2005 Hyundai Tucson



Decided after seeing how useful a lightbar like this can be for storm chasing on a friend's truck. I broke down and bought a cheap one of ebay. This one actually - http://tiny.cc/lightbarebay. I went with the curved to get a better spread of light and to match the curve of the bumper better. The quality of that lightbar actually ended up much better quality than I expected. I still have 2 smaller spotlight led bars to add more coverage in the ditches to help light up deer and other animals. The main use of these lights will be for at dusk and after dark on dirt roads, which is where you end up storm chasing a lot. Nearly hit a number of animals at that time of day and this could help with that. Those roads can be difficult to see even without the animals running around.

I measured the gap in the lower air inlet on my 2005 Hyundai Tucson to be about 25", so I decided to settle on a 22" light bar due to the mounts. Turn out the one I bought was just small enough to fit. You will want to take your headlights out for the install. You can run the wiring right through the grill. I bought this wiring kit just to make the install a bit faster - http://tiny.cc/wiringkitebay. There are actually good option to run the wires through some rubber seals out in the wheel well and in through the firewall if you want a clean install. If you have the none 4x4 model like me, you should have plenty of spaces to put the switch in, like pictured below. That switch is for amber lights currently but I will be changing out that switch and adding others for the light bar and other ambers flashers.

Will be building my new camera dome and will be posting updates on the build soon.










4 comments:

  1. Nice lights! Have you though about adding spot lights or a roof rack with a light bar?

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    1. I sold the Tucson last year, but I did actually add some spot lights on the roof before I sold it. I had a fairing from my previous car that I modded to mount those spot lights on to. Worked out great and the visibility was incredible. I took all the lights off when I sold it and they are now in the bumper of my Armada. Some pictures in my other blog post about it - http://owlsp.blogspot.com/2016/02/roof-rack-led-spot-lights-2005-hyundai.html

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  2. Do you have a comparison photo/video. I ordered a 9k lumen light bar which will be here tomorrow for my 2008 tucson

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    1. No comparison, but a light bar is like really great high beams that also extend off the road as well. When I would turn off my light bar, it was like I turned off all my lights (compared to just my low beams). If you spend much time off road or on highways with no traffic, you will love it.

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