Trunk Light
I know what you
are thinking... "Oh brother, a trunk light? Have you ever
heard of a flashlight, dude?" Well actually I have. I
even own a couple. I have also enjoyed the vexing search
for one in the middle of the Ozark Mountains late one night on the
side of a deserted road. I thought I knew right where it was.
It wasn't.
This late night peril started me thinking of
a solution. I did take notice of a couple other ideas that were
both good but had a couple drawbacks. The first light was one
of those big 6 inch diameter push on lights. You know, where
you just push the big lens on the front and the light comes on.
This guy had double face tape on it and it was stuck to the side of
his trunk. It was nice and easy to find in the dark but it seemed
to take up too much trunk space. The next one I saw was a small
DC powered light mounted in the lid with a toggle switch and he had
it wired to the battery. I thought that was great too until
you left your light on one night or the switch was inadvertently clicked
on by shifting cargo in the trunk. So from there I combined
the two ideas. Small switch operated light running off of independent
DC batteries.
I took a trip to my favorite local department store
and looked at their selection of small headlamps. I picked a
LED lamp. I took it home put it right on the work bench and
took the mini-grinder to the mount and customized it for mounting on
a piece of aluminum and mounted that to the inside top of my trunk
using the hardware from my trunk rack. I used this cross member
mount bracket only to take advantage of the mount hardware already
in the trunk. This was a simple and cheap project and I
can vouch for its functionality. GREAT!
By
using the underside hardware of the trunk rack no more hole drilling
was necessary. Notice also that I can toggle the light up or
down as needed. As an added bonus the light can be snapped
from its plastic mount and used as a flashlight. This
puppy is slick.
One final piece of advice.
Always carry another flashlight. I hope I don't need to explain
why.
And finally, I hope you realize that I cannot
be responsible for any problems malfunctions or damage that may occur
to you or your equipment just because you read this article.
I offer this only as friendly advice. Good luck.
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