# Christmas Lighting (on my Jeep)



## weegidy

It's that time of year again... *Christmas time!*​ 


Anyway, I'm a big fan of the holidays... Last year I started putting a wreath on the spare tire of my jeep... I even put Christmas lights on it. This year, I'm taking it a step further. I'm wiring 2 sets of Christmas lights on the rear... both of them red so I won't get pulled. I wrapped one strand around the bumper, and another around the wreath. The one on the bumper is always on, and the one on the wreath turns on when I step on the brakes. The lights I'm using are Philips 120v LED lights, I bought them at Target for $12/strand. I have an inverter in the back of my jeep, so using 120v lights was not a problem, but if I didn't have an inverter than using 12v DC lights would have been easier. 

The first order of business was wiring a relay so I could control a 120v signal with my brake lights. The relay is something I would reccomend even if you want to do this with 12v lights because it will limit the amount of current that you are trying to draw from your bake light cable. I also decided to use a SSR so it wouldn't click every time that I stepped on and off of my brakes, even though it was a little more pricey ($8). 
I mounted the relay...




And attached the control cables to my Jeep's center brake light.




Here's the Christmas lights' wire across the load leads.




The last thing I had to do was connect the power.





After that I just had to run the 120v AC lines. I ran one main like into the driver-side rear wheel well, and from there I connected the lights that were wrapped around the bumper and another line back into the Jeep that was connected to the lights on the wreath. All-in-all it looks pretty good. 
Here's my AC inverter.




The wires going in and out of my Jeep.




The wires under the wheel well.





Here's a video of what it looks like in action!
​

I appreciate any feedback... Hope you like it!


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