Off season project

[cjac]

Thought I'd share some pics of how I did a little lighting modification to my portable. Worked well!

All LED, main lights in the back, rope lighting across the top, and flush strips mounted under the seats. Strips light up the surface and holes, rope does a good job overall, and the rear lights are great when you need full light. Back lights are on rubber clips so they store well when collapsing and can be aimed.

Mounted a Ze-Rust battery box, and I have two 12V batteries in it. Mounted toggle switches, so I don't have to tinker with battery connections, just a flick of a switch. Wire: I used thermostat wire, nice since pos and neg are coated inside the main wrap, make for waterproof splices. Thremostat wire is rigid enough not to kink, but folds well. 7 inch zip ties are the ticket, 4 inch ones just aren't quite enough.

Ran it behind the 4 wheeler, no issues, light as soon as we're set up. No more broken mantles, globes, and propane cans for me!

By the way, I'm not what I'd consider handy al all.....

Chris

[Ralph Wiggum]

Very nice, Chris!

[10,000 Casts]

The Yukon is lookin good! I especially like the lights under the seats!

I am alot lazier in mine, I run my rope light in between us from the vexilar up and wrap it around the pole and back down so it hangs, not as sophisticated as yours.

What size batteries are in the box? Big deep cycles or 12 volt 7 amps?

[cjac]

Hey John, I was bored......

I have two 12v 7 amp batteries in there, but in reality I wired from the switches down to the batteries with alligator clips, so I could run all three from one battery by piggy-backing the clips. Great thing with the LEDs is minimal draw, so I could run all off one and even at that I wouldn't have to recharge every time I'm out.

Note the muskie rods sitting in the shelf brackets in pic #4, sad sight.....

Chris

[Giant_Jackpot]

cjac,

Looks good. I like to do custom stuff like that too. It's always good to see how others do things to make life a little easier.

I see the rods...... A tear came to my eye. Check out the North Metro post in the Tournament/League/Group Talk forum. Pete Maina is speaking at the banquet. A good way to ease the withdrawal symptoms we are going through......

[Nick Kuhn]

Maybe it's just because of the lighting/camera flash but the LEDs don't seem very bright. You can find some nice mounted laser LEDs that will be very bright (but they are directional, and from the ceiling would illuminate a circle maybe 2 feet wide). They are easy to find online but the shipping cost more than the LEDs. Otherwise you could look into some computer cold cathode lights, blue, green, red, UV, you could really do some interesting things really cheap.

[bassNspear]

looks awesome chris, now the questions is, do you caught any fish out of it?

[mtreno]

wow! looks great! way way to much time on your hands...... i have been so lazy this winter i never even buy mantles anymore - just use my headlamp. but i do have my crappie jig figure 8 in full effect.

[cjac]

Vahn,

It's the camera flash, I'm using the flush mount hole lights and the rope overhead most of the time. Those back circular lights are almost too bright to even look at, I flip those on for tying knots, etc.

Advantage of these over some of the light options you mentioned is these are marine lights and sealed for better handling the elements and condensation that builds up in the house. Less room for things to go wrong, which things typically do on me!

Chris