It’s kind of weird for me to say this, but for once, I didn’t actually do this installation. I stood out of the way and let someone else do it while I basically just watched. You see, Trasborg decided he wanted to put ARB Air Lockers in Jp’s 2007 JK, but he was warned about hacking into the factory wiring to do so. Apparently, the JK is kind of particular about messing around in the CAN bus system. Even if it weren’t for that, I’m so against hacking into factory wiring, it’s not even funny. The fastest way to screw up a perfectly good Jeep is to go monkeying around in the factory wiring. So when Trasborg told me what he wanted to do, I knew exactly how to go about it.
I never got to play with a JK, and I’ve liked the sPOD systems for years but the company only made them for JKs. By the time they started making them for TJs, the wiring in Jp’s TJ was already hacked up so I didn’t see a point to it, but when it came time to start adding aftermarket stuff to the JK, sPOD was my first stop. But since I’ve never installed one before, I took the Jeep to sPOD’s corporate headquarters to see how they did the install. As it turns out, the installation is really easy, and I needn’t have worried at all about any of it. Here’s some of the benefits and how the install worked.
The brain box for the sPOD comes with various different amperage fuses and high-end relays already installed. However, each of the six spots can run up to 30 amps continuously if you’ve got a bunch of higher-draw accessories.
The switch panel controls are all neatly pre-terminated and already hooked up, so the switches are ready to be mounted to the windshield right out of the box.
The only two wires you need to hook up to the brain box from the Jeep are a positive and negative. These wires get run directly back to the battery so the Jeep doesn’t even know it’s got aftermarket wiring in it.
This was a funny way to run a wire through the firewall of the JK that I hadn’t seen before. I usually use a coat hanger, but I’m told that something flexible is needed for the JKs.
The control box gets mounted on the drivers side under the hood and bolts right to the JK engine-control computer location.
The plastic trim panel needs to be trimmed just a bit to clear the bracket. This is easily done with a box cutter.
The finished installation under the hood is nice and clean and was done in well under an hour.
The bracket that actually holds the switches gets bolted to another bracket that gets attached to the factory footman loop.
Inside, the six switches look great between the sun visors. The company also has panels for air pressure gauges and has a Bluetooth cell phone interface as well.
