Installed Heretic light bar, Baja fog lights & Raptor lights in 2024 Tacoma TRD Pro grill

[1x1Pilot]

I’m not sure he’d share his file, but his email is [email protected], he can answer all your questions.

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[DesertFast]

How does the baja kit compare to the stock fogs? I have them in my cart but I'm shy to pull the trigger unless they're a lot better.

 

[theDLR]

"amber is the color of your energy...." -311

 

[JNAT112155]

Light bar options

I finally received the TRD Pro grill after a 40 day wait due to back order. I did my research while waiting and decided to go with the Heretic light bar instead of the Baja or Diode. The Baja option you need to trim some plastic of the grill in order for it to fit properly, something I didn’t want to do in case I wanted to swap out the light bar in the future I needed all the grill mounting points to be uncut. The Diode bar is 18” inches, when installed it leaves a 1” inch gap on both sides which didn’t look OE to me. The Heretic light bar was an exact fit for the grill, no need to cut or anything. You can buy the brackets from Rave Off Road but I think they only sell as a kit not sure if they will sell only the bracket.

Light bar mounting
I decided to make my own brackets since the mounting points are pretty simple. I started with a piece of cardboard and began cutting until I was able to match all the mounting points from both the grill and light bar. I went to Home Depot and bought two 5 inch L shape brackets and cut them accordingly. I just sprayed painted them black to avoid rust and to give it a cleaner look and done.

Light bar wiring
I wired the light bar into my factory 15 amp Aux switch. The factory pigtail is located next to the windshield washer fluid reservoir, it’s the all black cable within the pigtail. The light bar only had 2 wires a positive(red) & ground(black). I just had to connect the positive from the light bar to the black wire in the pigtail, then connected the ground from the light bar to a grounded screw nearby.

Baja S2 sport Baja S2 sport
I decided to go with the Baja S2 sport because of the serviceable items and interchangeable lens. They were a bit frustrating to install because of all the assembly required since you pretty much need to assemble your own kit from the package Baja sends you. The wiring Baja provided made that part simple and easy. It all plugged into the original harness which your able to turn on/off the lights by using the original fog light switch.

Raptor style lights
I had installed these exact lights on my original trd off road grill that the vehicle came with. I spaced them 8.5 inches apart since the grill is wide enough to pull it off. I run these lights as my DRL for added safety plus they look nice. They are tapped into a fuse that is on when the truck is on. This 2nd time around I decided to mount the lights from the inside the grill vs the previous method which were mounted from the outside the grill. This definitely is the cleaner install as it looks like the grill would have came this way. I made the first cut for each light using the smallest drill bit and increased 2 sizes. Once I was able to fit the diamond drill bit in my Dremel I began to slowly and patiently cut the rectangular shape of the led to make the light fit snug. Bought them from Amazon, brand is Seven Sparta.

Outcome

Your build looks awesome!! I’ve watched some of your YouTube videos and came across the raptor light install. Quick question on the stock TRD Off-Road grille — how were you able to fit the lights in the center near the logo? The bulbs look like they’d be too large for that area.

Also, since you mounted the raptor lights behind the grille instead of in front, have you had any issues with them moving around? Thanks!

 

[UndergroundTRD]

Your build looks awesome!! I’ve watched some of your YouTube videos and came across the raptor light install. Quick question on the stock TRD Off-Road grille — how were you able to fit the lights in the center near the logo? The bulbs look like they’d be too large for that area.

Also, since you mounted the raptor lights behind the grille instead of in front, have you had any issues with them moving around? Thanks!

Thanks for the kudos! I try to do videos on topics I’ve research and can’t find videos on. This way someone else can benefit from not going into a project blind. It’s always best when you know what you’re getting into. Regarding the raptor lights I trimmed the upper and lower tabs on each individual raptor lights and only left the tabs on the sides. Then I applied a small drop of gorila glue on each tab and pressed into the grill from the back side, that did the job since it was plastic on both mating surfaces. I know if you look at the front of the grill that horizontal line is not a flat thick surface to make the cut easy to imagine. You just have to keep making the rectangular hole bigger in small increments until the raptor light fits through. Eventually the whole will be big enough where the raptor light gets pushed out and the only thing keeping it from completely passing through are the side tabs.

 

[ixo]

Lookin Good!

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