Jimny lighting upgrades

Sections

  • Installing driving lights
    • Physical installation
    • Wiring installation
      • Wiring diagram and custom loom
  • DRL and fog light LED upgrade
  • Reverse light upgrade

Driving light install

While a lot of people go for larger is better for driving lights, I managed to get a good deal on lightly used Lightforce LED driving lights in a 6″ diameter. I’m really happy with the amount of light they throw and the beam width, and they look pretty good on the car I think too.

Physical installation

This part is the easiest bit of the process as I can put them directly onto my ARB bullbar. For those without a bullbar you might want to consider a few options:

Pretty easy to install the lights physically in the ARB bullbar. There’s already some holes in the bullbar, just slot them in and do them up.

My driving lights came with security bolts which is nice. Just remember to have the tool handy if you need to adjust the lights in the future!

Wiring

This is the bit more people struggle with, but it really isn’t hard. To wire them legally in Australia, you need to make it so they are triggered by high beam only. It’s also nice to fit them onto a switch. I’ve got an article here on what switches fit where, but I used a dedicated switch in one of the two blanked-off areas by the driver on the dashboard to take a short Toyota switch for the lights.

The input from this switch comes from the high beam to the factory headlights. You can make up your own if you source the correct Sumitomo connectors to make a piggyback cable, but you can also buy commercial piggyback adapters. A warning with them: a lot of ones appear to be wired incorrectly at the time of writing (early 2024). You consistently get people – not everyone, mind you – asking in the FB groups about why their driving lights or lightbar relay will not activate and they’re all using commercial adapters. I have ordered a few and I will produce a review and an independent page on how to make your own in due course.

Stedi piggyback harness. I installed bullet connectors to simplify wiring, but plan to make this a single hard-wired connection at some point.

The Jimny is positively switched, so you really only need the red wire off the piggyback adapter to go to the input of the driving light switch. The output from this switch then goes off to the input for a 12V relay to then provide the high power needed for the driving lights.

Wiring diagram & custom loom

While many manufacturers offer generic looms you can adapt to work with your Jimny, most of the time the looms are too long. Much better is to make up a custom loom – bonus points if you source the correct Sumitomo connectors for the headlight fittings (6189-0323 and 6188-0175 are the two needed to make up a piggyback lead) and integrate it all together.

Making a wiring harness from scratch isn’t difficult. You will need some form of fuse holder, some appropriate wire, a relay and connectors to match the driving light connections themselves. Split loom tubing is also a handy thing to have to make the loom neat, as is good quality electrical tape.

DRL and fog light upgrade

Reverse light upgrade