It's done, but after all the time I spent planning back in November to now, a lot did not go as planned. Before I post the pics here are the following facts of my plan with the safari bar.
As any of us know, the 4 Runner comes with fog lights, but me I just can't leave it at that, I need to add more. So I spent about a month thinking about lights and how to mount. I finally decided on the safari bar. What I learned about it, as easy as the installation should be, depending on what tools you have and the leverage, and can be a real pain. But once installed it's perfect.
Then came the lights, which my first instinct was to get PIAA (I should have stuck with that decision). I discussed with many people, and got a lot of great help from "Good Times". But not sure if it was Good Times or someone else, but I decided on a name brand fog light I never heard of but liked what I saw and that is "Lightforce". People, what you may not know about these lights, is due to the design and how the Safari bar is positioned, it's a bad mix: really bad mix. Once I bolted one light on, I realized I could not position it up for the angles that the plastic is molded to, and how it's positioned on the Safari bar I just could not do anything with it. Thank god I got the okay to return it and will be doing that this coming Monday. So here I am today with my buddy to help install fog lights that suck for my purposes: so we head to Pepboys to see what they had. On the way I went to the town's local auto parts store and bought a pair of no name brand fog lights for $30 bucks (paid over *$170 for the Lightforce). Well the directions stunk, and the installation was anything but easy: so including the time discussing if I should get new lights, the trip checking them out, purchasing them, coming home for the installation: well we started at 10am and finished at 4pm (give or take a few minutes).
But now I have my safari bar and really cute lights. The only thing is that they are not as bright as I wanted them to be, but since I have all the wiring done, if I ever want to upgrade the installation I know will be a lot easier.
What I learned out of all of this is that the big lights are no always the way to go. A lot of people say it makes the car look like a fly: I know that is true for some vehicles because that is exactly what my CR-V looked like. Anyway, I am happy with the install except, the installation of the button was not a simple pop it in. The damn thing would not fit, so I ended up using my Dremel to shave the sides down, and then using some elbow grease I got the button in. Besides the car being dirty (hey, it gives it character) the final product put's a smile on my face.
So here are the picks I have been asked for many times.
YIPPI!!!
And the bug deflector looks great too!!
