Easy 2nd Gen Behind the Grill Light bar

I'm going to try to write a semi detailed guide on how I installed my behind the grill light bar with no special brackets or anything. In my opinion it looks quite sleek and is unintusive to the overall look of the front end.
To start I purchased these items:

$22 WUPP Boat Marine Fuse Block Panel with LED Warning Indicator Damp-Proof Cover - 12 Circuits with Negative Bus Fuse Box Holder Screw for Car Marine RV Truck DC 12-24V, Fuses Included

Https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GBST5NX/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_pikzDb7A1ZTP7

Rigidhorse 22 Inch LED Light Bar 180W Single Row Flood & Spot Beam Combo 20000LM Off Road LED Light Bar Driving Light for Jeep Pickup SUV ATV UTV Truck Roof Bumper, 2 Years Warranty

$50 Rigidhorse 22" LED Light Bar Single Row Flood & Spot Beam Combo 20000LM Off Road LED Light Bar Driving Light for Pickup SUV ATV UTV Truck Roof Bumper

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07M7Z52QX/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_hjkzDbRRDV1S5
The first thing I did was remove the frame from the glass on the light bar and seal all the components with black RTV. These Chinese lights work great but often are killed by moisture due to a lack of sealing on the glass. With some RTV you'll save your new light from the elements.

I also cheated ( sorry I'm cheap and have access to a lot of high quality electrical components being a caterpillar technician) I ended up with an spare 50 amp breaker, relay and receptacle from a Cat machine and I used these for part of my wiring. I stuck the relay, fuse panel and breaker to the factory fuse panel lid with velcro. You could mount them solid with screws but I chose this method as I have several more accessories to install and was hesitant to make too much "permanent" before I wire in the rest of my lighting.
As you can see I used ten gauge wire for the breaker and fuse panel supply, as well as the built in ground bus on the fuse panel. This panel is nice as it offers lots of locations for grounds and you don't need to tap the frame or a weird factory bolt for a ground (although my light bar is currently grounded to it's mounting location due to the permanent thing I talked about earlier, it will eventually have a ground ran to the ground bus)

For my light bar I installed it's main power source to the relay on a 15 amp fuse and the power wire for the control side of my relay is fused on 5 amps. I'm terrified of car fire/electrical fire and decided to run it that way for safety. I also ran the power wire for the control side of the relay unswitched to the relay and the in cab switch is providing the ground to the relay control. This means if the control wire to the cab is ever shorted to ground it will just turn the light bar on and it won't spark or create much heat at all. (Again paranoid on my part, you'd be fine to just run a power and ground to the relay control unfused, switching the coil should never take much amperage) This is all I'm going to write on the control part of the system, you can find more information on how to wire a relay quite readily and in better terms than I can come up with. The below picture is where I grounded my switch, which again provides a ground for the control side of the relay. This a factory ground and promises a good connection. To access this panel reach behind the park brake pedal and you'll find a plastic nut on a stud that's just finger tight. Remove that and pop the kick plate off the plastic clips. It's under the door threshold, which pulls off with some force from it's plastic clip mounts.


Now for the mounting. I used two factory locations on the bumper support for my mounting. This does require *gasp* drilling two holes in your truck. I marked both the locations with a pin lunch and drilled appropriate sized holes for 5/16 bolts. If you zoom to where each mount on the bar is, there is two tabs coming out from the bumper support and they're slightly elevated, enough for us to get a nut on a bolt and mount the bar.

Close up of one of the tabs drilled for a 5/16 bolt.

In this pic you see im spacing the light bar up with a half inch spacer, this is to achieve the proper alignment with gap in the grill. At this point you're good to bolt the light bar on and connect the wiring.

At this point you'll want to slam the hood and check your alignment, but DONT. The hood latch will hit your new light bar. To fix this I simply removed the lower release latch handle.
As you can see in this picture I removed the two 6mm bolts (10 mm heads) and removed the hand latch release and push rod. I'm going to point out we aren't removing the secondary latch in any way. This latch is necessary so if the primary latch fails or doesn't latch completely the hood can't open while you're driving. DONT remove the secondary latch. It's possible to reach a finger through the top gap in the grill to reach the secondary latch and open the hood. If you have an aftermarket grill you can cut the hand release by an inch or so and it will clear the light bar and you can reach up behind it to release, I didn't find this necessary with the factory grill.
Enjoy! I wired in a factory style switch from Amazon but I didn't take a picture.

 

nice !

 

Turned out great!

 

I wonder if this install would work the same with the Sequoia TRD Pro grill on a 2nd gen.

 

Raising the dead here on this post but this is exactly what I’m looking to do with my ‘13, except with a 30” bar. I also happen to be in Castle Rock. I think I’ll need to custom fab some brackets to work with the 30” bar. Any chance I could pick your brain on this?