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Posted by Kenaigary [65.74.50.99] on Monday, November 26, 2012 at 23:54:47 :
In Reply to: Re: My Christmas Parade Power Wagon posted by CSCameron [68.228.198.56] on Monday, November 26, 2012 at 23:21:06 :
Yes, the truck is 12V, but I hooked the lights up to my Honda 2000 generator that I put in the bed.
The hardest part was stretching the cords out and figuring where you would connect them and have room to get the male ends into the bed with enough cord to plug into the generator. Measuring helped, but the cord stretch made things challenging. It took us three times to finally learn what would work with the four different light strings.
Finding the right clips was also a challenge. I've never shopped for light clips before and was astounded at the choices. I bought four different kinds and two worked OK, but only at parade speeds. The one is a "deck mount" clip that is shaped like a C with the top and bottom of the C curled. These work on the running boards and tail gate. These are sold in packs of 25 and that was just enough.
The other is a small contraption made for hooking to gutters. I bought the Adams All Purpose Light Clips and they worked on the fenders. It took about 50 of these and they are sold in boxes of 100 or more.
If you use the icicles like I did, you'll need to attach them to some cross struts across the bed as you can see in my photo. I was lucky as I already had made these to support my tonneau cover. These are necessary since the icicle strands are too long and would drag across the outside bed paint if not attached in this manner. I guess you could also wrap each strand up and clip them to the top of the bed, but that seemed like a lot more work particularly when working with light strands that will not cooperate particularly when it's cold.
Sorry for the long explanation, but if someone wants to do something similar, this could save them some work.
The finished product was nice, but the fun was in figuring out how to do it and spending time with a friend working on my PW. When it was all said and done, we spent nine hours on the project for a one hour parade, but it was worth it. Small town America is alive and well in Alaska.
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