Up next in 10
How To Install Puck Lights | Interior Van Lighting Made Easy with WAGO Connectors!
167 views
May 2, 2025
Have questions? Ask in the Chat! Don't forget to check out Odyssey Custom Vans latest build currently For Sale here: https://www.odysseycustomvans.com/ Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways we can help you: 1. If you need a vetted parts list, download our → FREE DIY Van Build Cheatsheet to help you save time and money on Van Parts and Gear: CLICK HERE: https://vanbuilderhq.com/ 2. If you want to get Done-For-You Van Build help, book a → FREE Consultation with my Calendly Link: CLICK HERE: https://calendly.com/odysseycustomvans/intro-call
View Video Transcript
0:01
[Music]
0:52
hey guys welcome back to the shop we are working in the van this weekend and we're going to be doing two things today
0:57
we're going to uh wire in the rear lights so we're just going to go back in
1:03
the holes that we drilled out and then we're going to pull the wire strip it um
1:08
put the wo connectors and stuff like that on there um just get that handled because what we're doing is we're moving
1:14
towards the upholstery side and we're going to be eventually covering everything up to the point where we
1:20
can't get back to it easily so we need to go ahead and take care of those things and then also we're going to come
1:27
back over here and we've got the uh plastic caps that go over
1:33
the uh the door pins that go up on the top so we're going to knock that out and
1:39
then uh yeah we're here to uh take your guys questions today if you have any questions during the live stream um this
1:45
is your first time on the live stream uh this is the vbl HQ live stream so I've
1:52
got a bunch of Articles uh on the website vanber builder hq.com and we go
1:58
over all kinds of stuff with like how-to build guides camper van product reviews product buying guides and then all those
2:05
are broken down down here in the bottom to all these blog
2:11
post all right so um yeah that is uh kind of what's going
2:17
on here and then if you guys are uh
2:22
interested I have a free DIY van build cheat sheet and basically it's an Excel sheet that I've created uh it's the the
2:30
past three years of all my shop purchases on Amazon I've organized them into an Excel sheet uh categorized them
2:36
from like electrical tools uh water system solar panels stuff like that so
2:42
if you're having a hard time getting started finding products this is a good place to get started it's got over 250
2:48
curated items and uh it's completely free so all you got to do is just to download this free cheat sheet just
2:54
click on download put your name and email address it'll be sent right to your inbox and you can uh get jump
3:01
started with your van build conversion and uh also make sure that you guys are subscribed to our YouTube channel so you
3:08
guys don't miss out um mainly turn off that notification Bell because I go random I go random I go live at random
3:16
times throughout the day and uh don't want you guys to miss um what I'm working on in the shop uh specifically
3:23
today we're going to be doing ceiling lighting and uh that's pretty much going to be it uh if you have any questions
3:29
about that topic you can um just put those into the chat but we're going to hop into the van and get
3:38
started so let me get my phone so I can actually see specifically today we're
3:43
gonna be what's going on here here we
3:49
go yeah so I got my phone with me that way I can see the
3:54
chat now one of the lights uh the lights that we have up here in the ceiling
4:00
um if you guys are you might be new to this video on a Saturday um sometimes we get a lot of new viewers on here so um
4:08
none of this is sponsored but I'll talk about the products we're working with so we have the ABC rig cealing kit so it's
4:15
just um pre-cut uh panels that go up in the ceiling um really they're just there
4:21
so that you can upholster them with some uh like vinyl fabric or like this Marathon fabric that we're
4:27
using but we wanted to uh bringing up a notch for John and Susan so this is
4:32
their custom van build with uh my van company which is Odyssey custom vans so
4:38
Odyssey custom vans builds the vans so that's me and then van Builder HQ is uh
4:44
the channel That I use to teach you guys um so up here we have ABC rig and
4:52
then John and Susan uh they liked what I had in my personal van and this is a
4:58
quarter inch SE a cedar ceiling um and it smells fantastic smells very good in
5:05
here so the cedar ceiling goes in on top of the ABC rig it's really the easiest way to install it uh one uh because of
5:13
that reason two because um it keeps this very low profile so by using this panel
5:21
as the structure you gain another half inch uh
5:26
or more of ceiling height which doesn't sound like a lot but it's that's a lot
5:32
uh for a van for sure um and then back here uh in our last
5:38
live stream we finished up doing our nomatic 48volt unit this is nomatic coolings X2 series
5:47
uh they have a 12 24 and 48 and this is our 48 volt system and we're using this in combination with the um ecoflow
5:56
system and uh
6:04
one second got to help the Dogg go over here C
6:10
NOA there you
6:18
go all right um yeah so we have that put in here working with the ecoflow system
6:25
then back here today we have the max fan uh we're actually going to start with this and we're going to be taking apart
6:33
um you build a van and then you start taking it apart it's it's very funny um
6:38
but the reason that I'm taking this off is I want to show you guys a uh Pro tip I think it's a really good way to wire
6:45
things in a van um and this is a perfect example so I pre-installed these lights
6:52
now I'm coming back to this Max fan and then what I'm going to do since I've
6:58
already installed this this is going to allow me to have access to all of my
7:09
wires CU what I did was I made a little wire highway coming through
7:15
here um and I learned about this not only
7:20
through my my uh personal van because I was wondering how to access the roof but
7:27
really Thomas's van build that we did um his is called Marine one so if you go
7:35
on the channel and you look up Marine one that's what we called his
7:40
van uh this was a good thing he kept adding more stuff to the van or we kept adding
7:47
more stuff I guess we did work together on that um coming with ideas but uh we had
7:53
a plan and we we accomplished that plan first but then we wanted some more uh
7:59
lights we wanted some more functionality we wanted some more circuits and because
8:04
we did a 8020 build and everything was extremely low profile against the wall it was hard to reroute more
8:12
wires so what we did is we used this method and then what this does is I can
8:18
take this shroud out and then now I can go back in and I
8:23
can pull all the stuff that I didn't uh or for his van for example I had a slot
8:30
right here and I could just easily feed wires through the side of the van and then um that made it much easier to add
8:39
stuff so if you're thinking about a way to avoid either the floor or maybe drilling holes in the side of the
8:46
wall this is a this is a good way to um uh make a solution for
8:53
that so while we're here we're probably going to uh get the the max fan taken
9:00
care of now what I do
9:06
um is I go through and I label all the wires so for example we've got
9:15
our let's see here so this wire you can see how many
9:23
wires are hidden in there so we've got the 12vt max fan uh so what we'll do is
9:28
we will connect this wire um then behind here we've got this
9:35
is our 12vt rear LED
9:42
um and then we've got up here we've got 12vt rear LED lights
9:51
Supply so this supply line is what actually provides power to the rear
10:00
lights um so if you guys are if you guys are
10:05
wondering so we have power coming in and then we have the individual cables going
10:11
to the lights themselves and then just in case you
10:16
mess up and say you don't label something um i' I'll show you example where I got a little tester battery and
10:23
then we'll make sure we test all these lights and make sure that they function before we do a you know wrap all this up
10:31
so the fun part is it looks like a mess right now um but we'll be cleaning this all up I'm
10:38
thinking that let's see
10:45
here so Eric said just finished installing the low uh the Flatline Low Pro roof rack for Transit medium roof
10:52
referred to your install video over and over really well done oh thanks so much Eric um yeah I hope that helped out
10:59
there's a couple I like their products um there's just a couple things that I think if
11:05
you like watching the videos that'll help you um stuff I guess that's not in the instruction manual the kind of real
11:12
life things that you might uh find yourself getting into but no thanks so much for
11:20
uh for the uh nice comment very
11:27
nice all right right so I'm going to try to approach this
11:34
systematically but really I'm just kind of go um no particular order
11:42
here so this is not really like a tutorial video uh just to preface
11:48
everyone that's maybe not watched the channel before uh all the stuff I do it's all long form it's just recorded
11:53
live um nothing is kind of pre-done because uh the challenge of editing all
12:00
these hours of content and making them into a nice video is uh it takes a long
12:06
time um but stuff on the channel when we go to events and stuff like that I'll make a nice video for that but for this
12:13
I'm just basically here to for you guys to hang out with me in the shop ask questions if you do and then sometimes
12:20
that actually turns into a uh a video and itself um all right so the first
12:27
thing let's see here so these are puck lights and uh
12:33
hopefully see I actually might zoom in just a little bit more so you guys can see what we're
12:41
working with
12:46
um Let me let me zoom
12:57
in
13:21
all right let me do a little
13:27
reply boom okay let's see here let's zoom in just a
13:50
tad okay there we go it's good place to start now the ceiling we have the
13:55
quarter inch of ABC rig uh panel and then we have quarter inch of the cedar
14:02
so that's half inch so these Puck lights uh this is the magic Behind These Puck lights uh
14:09
also uh the fact that they're very inexpensive so if they burn out uh
14:14
they're very cheap to replace but you see they're designed for a/ inch thick
14:20
opening and on this side you notice there's no wire so that's one thing that
14:25
we're going to be doing today is um pulling the wire over for this one but again you can see here where my hands
14:31
are going I've got good access to everything so kind of think about um
14:37
it's your van so you don't have to copy everything that's online if there's a way to make these lights closer to an
14:44
access point um then go ahead and do
14:49
it now this one if I take it out we've got a wire
14:57
here and as you can see here this wire is
15:04
actually this wire [Music]
15:10
so um you can kind of see how much pre-planning you have to do in a van
15:15
when the start of this video everything looked nice and clean but now you can see the puzzle that is behind here um so
15:22
this wire is our power supply to um the
15:28
these two lights so we got a power supply to these two lights and then if we come back
15:36
here we'll pull this out now be careful these Springs man they will pinch your
15:42
finger so bad they're like a almost like a mouse strap
15:48
so so sometimes I forget how strong these Springs are which is it's a good
15:55
thing all right so those are all out now if we come in here we got a little
16:00
surprise we have our other wire just kind of hanging out
16:05
right there so power supply for the rear power
16:11
I mean uh Power coming in power coming in and then
16:18
um so this one says Supply and this is our 12vt rear
16:27
LED so the 12 real now we just got to go
16:33
back and remember since we have everything labeled you know it it keeps you from
16:40
being tax on remembering about all these circuits um so down here I'm just kind
16:46
of fumbling through I got the front LED wire I've got the max fan I've
16:52
got rear LED okay so this is my rear LED
16:59
and let's see what do we got here front Galley
17:04
spare um by the way if you just heard me say front Galley spare uh that's a spare
17:11
wire for the kitchen Galley and I uh it's actually not the kitchen Galley it
17:18
is um up here so if I'm pointing on the camera this uh panel right here this
17:27
panel it's an extra wire that is wired in there uh it's not for anything it's
17:33
for future expansion um there's always something
17:38
that you might want to install and uh you know it's just good I you know it
17:45
doesn't really cost that much more if anything it's just um if you can run that uh makes
17:54
it just easier in the future all right um let's see here we
18:00
got 12vt rear LED so what we're going to do is we're going to take our little
18:06
battery and we're going to we just got a little tester so I'll show you this real
18:14
quick so here's the actually there we go so here's the battery just a little
18:19
Cheapo it's actually my old motorcycle battery and I use it to
18:27
um do exactly what I'm doing here um let me do this so you guys can
18:34
see just what the heck is going on
18:42
here so this is the rear LED supply
18:48
power um my favorite tool to strip things is this Klein
18:54
tool so the number on this tool is 11 let's
19:03
see where is it there we go anyway I had it on here for a second
19:09
there you go 11061 and you can see this is what it
19:15
does so the
19:22
wire see if I got a spare wire here so these things are
19:30
amazing so what you can do is you can put the wire in here just like that and
19:38
you can uh remove the outer um actually you got to be more
19:43
aggressive than that second there you go you can move the
19:50
outer part of the wire like that so Marine wires always have that outer
19:56
jacket and then what you can do here is really quickly trying to do this on
20:04
camera you can take it oh I know why that's messing up I'm
20:11
doing it backwards because I'm my camera here you go so you can take it and just
20:17
strip these off just like that and it's very it's
20:22
very very quick so definitely suggest that if you
20:30
guys are working on a van that you get one of these um so I'm going to go ahead and strip this
20:45
cable okay and then I'm going to go up here I'll switch to the camera in just a
20:51
second but this is my 12volt rear LED supply so this is the same line this is just the one that
20:58
that's uh inside inside the
21:06
van so this one we're going to get into uh talking
21:11
about the wo
21:17
connectors we go get a the
21:22
box so we have the two power lines coming in and then we got two other
21:27
lines coming off of that um so these are the wio
21:32
connectors you guys watch humble Road he uses these and they're really nice
21:39
they're these uh lever these uh lever
21:47
connectors so if we got a we need to have a
21:52
three um so this kit this is a brand new kit so you can see I've got tons of
22:00
options so I go through here and then I'm going to pick one that has these this uh
22:08
three three levers and I'm going to open them all
22:16
up and I'll come back in we'll we'll change the camera here in a
22:22
second but I'm going to
22:30
so let's go back to there we go so we're going to come in here and
22:38
we're going to go put one of them on our positive and on these uh wo connectors
22:45
they actually have a uh strip length gauge to make sure you strip it to the
22:52
proper length um I've kind of got it memorized but you can reference it it's just the
22:59
right on the side it's a little arrow and that makes sure that you've got the
23:04
enough material removed for for a good connection okay so we're going to take
23:10
that off and then let's see what we want to do so
23:16
we're going to go ahead and strip this and we'll be doing this mult multiple times because I am kind
23:23
of I making this a little bit of a teaching video
23:29
um so this wire is actually going to get cut again um so it's actually going to come
23:35
through it'll come through here and then come out this
23:41
side um when we get further on in the process but uh I'm just going to show
23:47
you how
23:56
to how how to hook this
24:07
up and then each one of our individual LED lights is going to have its own wo
24:12
connector and that way John and Susan if one of the lights ever burns
24:18
out you know it may take 30 seconds to
24:23
pop in a another spare all right minute maybe a solid
24:28
minute so we got four of those wio connectors and we're going to need not four but we're going to need six because
24:36
we're going to be splitting the line um so we can make those make those
24:56
connections okay so this one's
25:02
good so there's our
25:15
positive now you could still crimp these but um I suggest that you don't crimp
25:23
them um and actually what we're going to do here
25:30
I'm just going to go ahead we're going to go ahead and wire
25:49
this okay now we've got all this extra wire
25:56
it's okay it's not going to to flop around or make any noise like that but um this way we're going to ensure that
26:03
we've got plenty of room to work with if we need to fix
26:11
something so let me go grab my pliers to cut
26:26
that
26:32
there they are the other tool I use is this pair of
26:38
cobalt it's a insulated and non-insulated
26:43
crimper and on top of that it also has a wire cutter that's really good for
26:51
pretty substantially gauge size gauge wires um
27:00
but yeah we're just going to come through here we're just prepping all these wires
27:07
for
27:13
connection so this one's good to go we got this one and so this one is going to be a
27:21
three three-way connector so we'll go back to our
27:26
box grab a three-way
27:33
connector and you guys can just see how fast this uh stripper
27:42
Works um I would say if if you don't really commit to the strip uh it doesn't
27:50
get a good bite on here so just make sure when you go to strip it that you really clamp down on there and and it'll
27:57
work just fine and then always before you put the wire in there uh make sure you strip
28:06
it I mean twist
28:13
it we got our three-way connector we'll put in uh this one is the power coming
28:20
in but it doesn't matter once we get to this point and then this is the power going
28:26
out to the second one and then our third
28:33
wire is going to be one of our Puck
28:41
lights so just make sure you got a good Twist on that and then we just do our
28:56
corresponding colors here so now we'll go and
29:03
get second
29:12
one now like I said when you get to this point order doesn't matter as long as all the positives together and all the
29:18
negatives are together but I mean I still kind of like the the wire coming in is the first one the second one is
29:25
the one transferring and then the third is the connection okay so that is our
29:31
first connection and then we're just going to hop on over here and then we've got
29:44
our move the camera down just a little bit
29:51
more there you go okay over here we've got our two
29:59
connector and then this one is our final leg um if you had another
30:06
leg you would just wire this into it uh you don't have to do it like I did
30:13
where I have two wires here um you could go from here to here to there to there
30:20
and back but again I keep talking about this low profile roof and um
30:27
what that means is I can't go this way I can I have I need to bring my wires here and come down this Channel and come back
30:34
over because what I've done is I've gotten this so tight to the roof that I can't put a wire here and then pull it
30:40
that way because the cross member is in the
30:51
way all right so we got both of our lights here um at this point this would be a good point to you know test our
30:58
circuit so what we'll do is we're going to take
31:04
this and then we are going to um actually I'm going to finish the back that way we don't have any open
31:12
open wires on the circuit because right here I grouped these two together but I
31:17
didn't really uh I didn't Define which one is
31:22
the power coming in or not all right so we got this
31:30
wire so let's just see if we can do this sometimes we can get away with just
31:36
going down if not I'm going to have to uh get a piece of wire so I can
31:56
actually
32:47
all right so I'm grabbing a coat
32:53
hanger and we're going to make that off
32:59
our way so we can grab our wire so we'll get a piece of tape some masking tape or electrical
33:06
tape and we'll actually go and put this
33:18
through so looks pretty
33:25
good
34:26
sh
35:09
this spot's hard because there's the Ford factory wire that's coming through
35:15
here so we got that coming through we got all the Havelock wool that we put in there we got a bunch of zip ties and
35:20
stuff kind of bunch of stuff hidden up there um that makes it makes it
35:25
challenging as I get caught all right so for this one we're
35:33
going to use electrical tape because I don't want to uh have that wire pull
35:55
off
36:59
okay hopefully we will not catch on anything it is
37:11
possible okay
37:25
go
39:25
for
39:34
so this one we're going to try to even this up
39:42
um this is probably typical of how much I usually give on The
39:55
Wire
40:06
okay so for this one we need another uh
40:12
threeway
40:25
clip
41:55
for
42:34
okay incoming outgoing light this is the outgoing and we have our other light we
42:42
got all this make sure these wires are good in
42:49
[Music] here all right hold on a second I got a
42:55
delivery
43:00
NOA come here here office
43:16
go let's see what I got give me one second
43:25
guys
43:44
right there where is it
43:54
oh yeah thank you yep I didn't know if you was open that's all
44:25
good all
44:35
right
44:41
okay so this should [Music] be see what we got
44:50
here so this should be our 6 foot I think this is our six fo L
45:01
TR
45:18
yep okay so this is our piece of 6ot L track for the ceiling that was a good
45:24
timing so this is going to
45:31
go right in here just like
45:54
that
46:01
they typically come in 4 foot links and so that one had to be that's a special
46:08
one all right let's get back to
46:24
wiring
46:33
all right see got those done these are ready to
46:39
go so now this one is our power supply
46:45
for those two
46:54
lines
47:51
I'll probably cut this shorter
48:08
okay a power supply coming into our two lines we got our back got these
48:15
connected quick double check all right now let's
48:22
see we got some power so this is
48:29
our see 12vt rear
48:54
LED
49:12
oh that's our read that's our reading LED we need
49:19
our Drive read LED 12vt read LED
49:27
we need our 12vt
49:34
LEDs strip that one
49:50
off all right this should be it here we go
50:00
so they all work the battery I'm using is just really dead
50:09
so I'm G throw this on the charger we'll clean our stuff up and then I'll once they're in the ceiling
50:16
this should have enough charge to where we can actually turn the lights
50:24
on
50:56
okay so our electrical connection works now we can go ahead and clean all these wires up we'll start
51:03
with the back again just make sure um there's no
51:08
need to tape anything so we're just going to stuff that in there um what we want to do is
51:14
make sure that when we put the Clips in we don't have the clips resting
51:22
on uh one of the cables so I don't want it pinching it because
51:29
um cuz that light we're probably never going to touch that light
51:54
again
54:22
and then once you got these all stuffed in here uh another thing that you can do
54:27
is um I'll do it right now is just just take a little bit of that extra hav
54:34
loock wool that you have this these like real really small
54:42
pieces and just put them on top of the wire that way they're in place but then
54:48
there's also like you keep that barrier just in case the ceiling gets really or
54:54
the roof of the van gets really really hot so when I do installation I I try to
55:00
put you know half on the bottom and then half on the
55:13
top now I'm just going to take a thin strip and this is going to hold back
55:19
those wires give us a little bit more
55:33
insulation right so that's going to go just like that and then when we have our piece of plastic come up it'll take the
55:40
it'll finish the rest of that off um so now let's go
55:46
[Music] and connect our Max
55:54
fan
56:46
uh heads up I'm using 16 gauge for the uh ceiling
56:53
wires and then I'm using uh this is 12 12 gauge for the max
57:16
fan actually eight 18 gauge sorry 18 gauge for the LEDs 12 gauge for the for
57:23
the max fan now be careful the max van positive wire
57:29
is black so we are going only for the max van so the max vanan we're
57:36
connecting red positive to black positive
57:42
so I'm not sure why they do that do not ask me why and white is
57:49
negative oh man
57:59
now Max vanan is using a 16 gauge wire um for
58:05
their fan wire but
58:11
remember the reason we upsize is the distance it takes this line to get to our
58:16
fan um we don't have a significant voltage drop but Max fans are one of
58:22
those pieces of equipment that are pretty finicky with power so you don't want to
58:30
uh uh not supply it with the adequate amount of
58:45
power okay so we're just going to wrap
58:53
this
59:21
yeah we're putting it under our insulation
59:29
and we're moving it over any of these screws that come through the
59:34
ceiling all
59:44
right and let's see do we have anything else we wanted to put in
59:53
there besides more insulation so let's get
59:59
that insulation
1:00:23
going
1:01:38
all right um yeah I'm going to uh end it
1:01:43
there for the live stream don't see any questions that anybody has so
1:01:50
uh we're going to keep this one nice and simple today um don't forget to check
1:01:59
out van Builder HQ if you guys haven't already our website with all of our blog
1:02:04
post and stuff from events and then also if you guys are
1:02:10
interested in getting a custom van conversion just like John and Susan did behind me go to Odyssey custom van so
1:02:17
that's my van building business and uh we've got um whatever Vans we have
1:02:22
currently for sale are on the website video tours and then if you would like to contact me for a personal
1:02:30
consultation to customize your van or talk about a van conversion you can
1:02:35
click here on this uh calendar link hop on my calendar find a date and a time
1:02:42
that's most convenient for you and we'll get on a consultation and talk about your new custom van
1:02:50
build all right guys that is going to do it for today's live stream thanks so much for watching make sure you guys are
1:02:57
subscribed like this video If you enjoyed it uh any questions put those in the comments below and uh turn that
1:03:03
notification Bell on because I go live at random times and I don't want you guys to miss out on the next live stream
1:03:09
um but that's it we'll see you guys on the next [Music]
1:03:21
video
#Custom & Performance Vehicles
#Motor Vehicles (By Type)
#Trucks
# Vans & SUVs