Badger203
New member
I don't think I have posted here much; if at all; but, I wanted to put this up as my way of saying thanks to everyone for all the info you have posted here on the forums. The ideas for the finished product came from here and you all have my thanks for the great ideas. From properly adjusting the blasted mower deck to adding lights and switches; I found everything I needed here. Hopefully this post will offer some help to someone else looking to add goodies to their tractor.
I took delivery of my JD2320 in May and have about 29 hours on it. When I decided to take the plunge I came here and read everything I could about owning a "tractor" as opposed to my previous lawn tractor. The tasks I had planned for the tractor were mowing, tilling a garden and blowing snow. My neighbor talked me into getting the loader and man I glad he did. Besides the mower deck, I have gotten the most use out of the loader. I am hoping we get some snow this year so I can play with the snow blower.
As I read more and more posts, I decided I wanted to an an electric actuator to the blower chute and lights to the ROPS so I can blow snow at night. I work mostly days so I will be doing snow in low light or darkness. So, that said, I recently finished my project adding a full electrical system to my tractor with LED lights facing front and rear, a LED amber light bar, a chute actuator circuit, a fuse block and a switch panel to run everything.
I started with a Fuzeblocks 30amp fuse block. You can see them here. It has 6 circuits and each circuit can be set to hot all the time or be switched with the ignition. The whole block is run via a 30amp 12G wire from the battery and I placed the fuse block to the rear of the seat.
The rat's nest of wire still needs cleaned up a bit; I have to get more loom for on it. The wire you can see there is a pigtail for my sprayer. I have a lead that plugs into it with a switch for operating the sprayer; when the sprayer is off I just unplug it and leave the pigitail behind the seat. Once its in the loom it will look much mincer.
Next I added a switch box with a custom four switch panel. I got the switches and panel from Wiring Products. You can see them here The box is just a project box from Radio Shack and it is mounted on a RAM Mount pedestal.
Once the switch box was mounted I wired up to the lights. There is enough wire in the loom so the ROPS can be folded to get in and out of my garage. I decided to mount all the lights inside the ROPS so if I hit something or God forbid, roll over, at least I may be able to salvage the lights and bar.
For the lights I chose a Rigid Industries 10" LED light bar for forward light and a set of Rigid Industries Dually 2X3 with diffused lens for the rear. I had thought some type of amber warning light for the setup and a buddy of mine owns an emergency light shop and had the bar laying around. He made me an offer I couldn't refuse on the lightbar so I decided to rig it up.
Figuring out how to mount everything was the hardest part of this project. I did not want to drill into or weld to the ROPS. I can't fabricate metal to save my life and I don't own a welder, so the project had to be done using hardware that could be purchased and fabricated to fit. I ended up buying a four foot section of channeled aluminum bar for building display racks. The lights are all mounted using a nut that slides into the channel and screwed down with an allen screw. A bit of loc-tite was added to each screw to keep it in place. I had to use some larger washers due to the size of the mounting holes on the brackets and the lightbar had to be disassembled, drilled, the end caps were cut down with a Dremel and it was reassembled on the bar. I planned to take pictures of the whole process; but, it proved so frustrating that pictures went out the window.
The whole setup is attached to the ROPS with two square 2" clamps from Tractor Supply and I bought a piece of aluminum angle and cut and drilled it to mount the bar level when the ROPS is in the upright position.
Here's pics of the finished setup:
Here it is lit up:
And last but not least, here is a short video of the whole thing lit up:
Again; many thanks to all the effort you folks put into these projects before; you made mine much easier.
I took delivery of my JD2320 in May and have about 29 hours on it. When I decided to take the plunge I came here and read everything I could about owning a "tractor" as opposed to my previous lawn tractor. The tasks I had planned for the tractor were mowing, tilling a garden and blowing snow. My neighbor talked me into getting the loader and man I glad he did. Besides the mower deck, I have gotten the most use out of the loader. I am hoping we get some snow this year so I can play with the snow blower.
As I read more and more posts, I decided I wanted to an an electric actuator to the blower chute and lights to the ROPS so I can blow snow at night. I work mostly days so I will be doing snow in low light or darkness. So, that said, I recently finished my project adding a full electrical system to my tractor with LED lights facing front and rear, a LED amber light bar, a chute actuator circuit, a fuse block and a switch panel to run everything.
I started with a Fuzeblocks 30amp fuse block. You can see them here. It has 6 circuits and each circuit can be set to hot all the time or be switched with the ignition. The whole block is run via a 30amp 12G wire from the battery and I placed the fuse block to the rear of the seat.
The rat's nest of wire still needs cleaned up a bit; I have to get more loom for on it. The wire you can see there is a pigtail for my sprayer. I have a lead that plugs into it with a switch for operating the sprayer; when the sprayer is off I just unplug it and leave the pigitail behind the seat. Once its in the loom it will look much mincer.
Next I added a switch box with a custom four switch panel. I got the switches and panel from Wiring Products. You can see them here The box is just a project box from Radio Shack and it is mounted on a RAM Mount pedestal.
Once the switch box was mounted I wired up to the lights. There is enough wire in the loom so the ROPS can be folded to get in and out of my garage. I decided to mount all the lights inside the ROPS so if I hit something or God forbid, roll over, at least I may be able to salvage the lights and bar.
For the lights I chose a Rigid Industries 10" LED light bar for forward light and a set of Rigid Industries Dually 2X3 with diffused lens for the rear. I had thought some type of amber warning light for the setup and a buddy of mine owns an emergency light shop and had the bar laying around. He made me an offer I couldn't refuse on the lightbar so I decided to rig it up.
Figuring out how to mount everything was the hardest part of this project. I did not want to drill into or weld to the ROPS. I can't fabricate metal to save my life and I don't own a welder, so the project had to be done using hardware that could be purchased and fabricated to fit. I ended up buying a four foot section of channeled aluminum bar for building display racks. The lights are all mounted using a nut that slides into the channel and screwed down with an allen screw. A bit of loc-tite was added to each screw to keep it in place. I had to use some larger washers due to the size of the mounting holes on the brackets and the lightbar had to be disassembled, drilled, the end caps were cut down with a Dremel and it was reassembled on the bar. I planned to take pictures of the whole process; but, it proved so frustrating that pictures went out the window.
The whole setup is attached to the ROPS with two square 2" clamps from Tractor Supply and I bought a piece of aluminum angle and cut and drilled it to mount the bar level when the ROPS is in the upright position.
Here's pics of the finished setup:
Here it is lit up:
And last but not least, here is a short video of the whole thing lit up:
Again; many thanks to all the effort you folks put into these projects before; you made mine much easier.
