Installing Hella 500s Behind the Grill

The Dodge Ram 5.7L HEMI© has a good amount of room between the radiators and the grill. It also has two very conveniently located cross members which make a great mounting point for behind the grill off-road lighting. This is a pretty easy mod, and the Hella 500 lighting kit I received has very nicely done installation instructions. I ended up wiring mine a bit different though because I wanted it to be a completely independent setup. The downside to having it completely independent is that I could forget to turn them off and kill the battery overnight.

One thing you have to remember about doing behind the grill lighting is that the grill design (especially the 2005 PW honeycomb design) isn't conducive to flood or fog lighting because it doesn't allow much lateral light escape. This means the lights you choose need to be driving lights / pencil or spot beams.

I didn't have a big enough deepwell socket to get the lights torqued down properly so the alignment is off. Once I get the right socket, I will not have both lights converging exactly on the same spot, but maybe a couple to four feet apart. The lights were also pointed down a little, so I need to raise them a bit.

For two 55w lights, they do pretty good. Getting on a back road with no traffic it really lights the distance up quite a bit.

Click on a picture for a larger, higher resolution view.

Here's the grill before	With the hood opened
Using the hood latch to center from	Drilled two holes 12" from centerline
Quick check to make sure they're even	A little black Rustoleum paint
Here's what's in the kit	Got the ground (blue) and relay power
Nice long wires for easy routing and install	Probably the only time these lights will have covers
Wiring done, they're on	Another angle with them on
Temporarily wired switch	LED lights up when on
No LED light when off	Lights off with hood closed
Another angle	Low-beams, fogs, Hellas on (with flash)
Same, but no flash	Head on
Head on no fogs	Head on (some alignment) no fogs
Low-beams	Low-beams and Hellas on single point
High-beams and Hellas on single point