Do It Yourself Tower Light Bar

Tower Lights are a great addition to any boat. Not only do they help navigating the water on those late night cruises, but they also just look plain cool! This "Do It Yourself" lightbar took two days to complete and the cost came in just under $160 USD (inlcuding the lights).

Shopping list:

All parts for this project were purchased either online or at Home Depot. The L-shaped piece of 1/8" thick alumimum from Home Depot provides the base for the lightbar. All holes were marked out for mounting the lights to be in a symmetrical staggered formation of three in the front and three in the back. Once happy with the hole locations, you can drill and round the edges in preperation for the lights.

For painting, a rough sanding was done on the aluminum and then the entire bar was washed with detergent and submersed in water. Avoid touching the bar with your skin after it is cleaned and dry as the oils from your hands will hinder the paint adhesion. One spray of paint over the bar was applied once it was dry, follow by a wet coat of automotive primer from a spray can. Allow the primer to dry for approximately 30 minutes, then heat the bar up (you can use a hair dryer) to cook the primer on. Once this was finished, the bar was sprayed with two coats of Rustoleum Metallic Flake paint, waiting an hour and a half between coats.

After completing the paint job, all of the lights can be mounted and secured into place with the proper sized washers and bolts.

All brackets marked out for drilling.	Holes drilled sans the mounting clamp holes	Holes drilled and Edges rounded
Rounded Edges	Test Fit	Test piece of aluminum for paint
Test piece of aluminum - checking paint adhesion	Primer coat	First Coat
First coat hang dry	Final Coat	DIYwake.com bar clamps (1 7/8")
Final Angle	Final Top/Front	Final Front

Notes from the author - I am planning on running each set of wires (hot and ground) to the sides and middle, putting heat shrink tubing around each and will then be left with essentially three lines (Left, Middle, Right).

Since the hot and ground will be joined into one line, I will just use the flex loom to cover all the wire clusters and to make it look better. I'm still trying to decided where I want the hole in the wakeboard tower to be - I'm leaning toward putting it right in the middle to keep all of the lines of the lightbar symmetrical.

I might also be adding a quick connect/disconnect where the three lines coverge into on line.