As we all know, the interior of a Pinz is a tad bit dark when the sun has gone down. I looked and schemed for all kinds of options for a "dome light" for the cab to some type of "spreader" light for the back. My Pinz came wth an am/fm/cd player mounted in a plastic box in the roof of the cab. The radio hasn't worked b/c the former owner had XM and no need for a regular antenna. Wel this weekend a buddy of mine and I tackled both problems and I wanted to share them with you.
We incorporated the lighting issue into the radio box. I selected a set of led strip lights to be used as the "dome light" for the cab. These particular lights were designed to be mounted outside the vehicle on the grill. I figured they would be perfect inside the cab. I purchased a small rocker switch and mounted it to the back of the box on the side and on the drivers side. The led's came with a voltage reducer that needed to be mounted. Fortunately we had enough room inside the box behind the radio. As you can see from the photo, we mounted one strip on the drivers side and one on the passenger side. The light for the back cargo area was mounted in the middle.
The cargo area light had a switch on it, so we just brought a hot wire from the radio to the rocker switch for the led's and to the back light itself. Since the radio is run straight off of the 12v converter we used 12 v electrical as it was convenient and easy to get.
While we were at it, I installed an am/fm antenna where the CB antenna would normally mount. I found a few loose wires while I had it part. We cleaned it, tightened her up and now have a custom radio/light box that performs triple duty: music, cab light, cargo light. See the photos below:
- CustomRadioLightbox001.JPG (25.57 KiB) Viewed 2749 times
- CustomRadioLightbox002.JPG (25.56 KiB) Viewed 2749 times
- CustomRadioLightbox003.JPG (23.88 KiB) Viewed 2749 times
