Cleaning up your AUX features under the hood the right way..

12 Deg North Industries · #1 06-08-2019, 04:56 AM

Wanting to add something to your truck for aux lighting or other features but wanting to do it in a clean manner on the cheap doesn't always offer the best solutions and can still look like a mess. At the same time doesn't mean you need to dent your wallet to the tune of $700 for fancier systems either. So while we recently did the last setup in a 2011 GMC Sierra, we know.. it's not a Ford Ranger build and we suck because of it.., but just hear us out.

You can spend your own time looking at the U-Con 2.0 PDM Relay Switch Panel while we dive into the pics and write up below. At the end if you have any questions or further info feel free to comment below or contact us directly at the information below or PM us.

What comes in the kit for the most part is: Switch Panel, Relay Box, Plug & Play Wiring Harness, Trigger Wires.

We start under the hood of the truck by finding a optimal placement of the fuses and relays. We chose to get a little creative with placement right next to, or actually attached to the factory under hood fuse block opposite of the battery but near the future secondary battery for this particular truck. We'll cover that later. The main reason why this route was taken is because the owner deemed the amount of unnecessary wire runs and added relay packs were a bit much and not all mounted in the same fashion as two different installers previously had their hand in wiring up existing auxiliary lighting systems.

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12 Deg North Industries · #2 06-08-2019, 02:53 PM

EDIT: Links Fixed

12 Deg North Industries · #3 06-17-2019, 12:40 AM

Update:

Continuing on getting the prep & finish work done on the panel itself is already a tedious effort, along with materials cost and two of the reasons we even admit, this is just slightly over the top as far as installations are concerned.

However, in this day with so much of everything becoming if not already cookie-cutter like. We felt taking some long time gained experiences and skills and taking it up a notch was well worth the excitement and response from a long time client whom we've had the honor to groom not only trust with them, but a working relationship that will be a lifetime client. That is what we are striving for here.

So after several coats of a special plastic primer, we were able to start adding layers of the actual dash color matched paint/dye, [now at the time of this posting this I would like to point out that there is what seems to be a slight off color look to the end product. It is not a color issue but what the camera is showing but albeit not as effectively as in person is that the panel has a texture to it rather than being smooth to match the original dash plastic panel itself]. There is roughly nine coats of paint and two coats of texturing technique so that the panel could be felt by the owner with slight of glance at night for on the fly operation changes.

Assembly of the panel comes after some light sanding of the switch gallies to smooth up the surfaces that had some over spray on them. After a quick sanding and testing each buttons function for being operable the assembly could continue.

The last and most exciting part for all was the dash assembly. Customer was called and able to spend enough time for us to do the minimal dash assembly and check for exactness and will return a couple days after to program switches to their functions.

The following pictures are just the aesthetic results during the day time both off and backlit. We will surely post some last minute night time shots so a night time view is available to be seen.

Should you have any questions feel free to contact us at the contact information in our signatures or PM us for more. Outside of that we welcome comments and community participation below, share and or follow us on social media.

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