Trax Customs - Blog

Jeep Wrangler Custom Switch Panel

Sun, 20 May 2012 22:09:33 -0700

Cope brought his Jeep Wrangler Rock Crawler in today to get all his electronics hooked up right.

What he needed was his New PIAA lights installed and hooked up proper, his Front and Rear Electronic Lockers hooked up, his winch wired and everything on a custom made switch panel.

I had some old LEDs that were basically brand new laying around, so instead of the red halogen bulbs that came with the switches, he now has Bright Blue.

I custom made the panel for the switches our of ABS Plastic, bent to match the shape of the un-used ash tray.

After wiring everything up, using about 80+ zip ties to secure all the wires, we're good to go.

Wicked Solsti Projector Retrofit

Sun, 13 May 2012 23:06:13 -0700

Here are some Bi-Xenon Projectors I did for a client in Texas.
2009 Pontiac Solstice
Wicked Stock Paint color (red-ish metallic)

Brand New FX-R Hybrid Bi-Xenon Projectors (Version 3.0)
Internals Modified and Painted to give off a red demon eye when not lit
Morimoto 6000k 35 watt HID Bulbs
Morimoto 35 watt Ballasts
Morimoto Dual CCFL Halo Accent Lights
Custom H13 Bi-Xenon Heavy Duty Harness with Morimoto Relays

This was a custom project, where there was a lot of back-n-forth communication with
the client to get this just right. We originally painted these ALL Wicked Red to see what it looked like (see Corvette headlights). They turned out great, but after looking at them with
the client, we decided to break it up a bit and paint the stock reflector black….and that did it….perfect! Another thing on this one was that he wanted dual accent lights in there
somehow…whether that was going to be just CCFLs, LEDs or combination of the two.
We finally decided on Dual White CCFL lighting accents, one placed behind the shroud to give it the ‘Iron Man’ look and another one mounted just behind the Shrouds outer lip, so that it gives off a nice back lit circle.
The lenses on these things were bad when I received them. Not horrible, but as with
ALL Solstice lights nowadays, you think they are fine because chrome hides a lot, but as soon as you paint the chrome ANY color, the flaws POP….and this one had internal and external blemishes and dings. My painter worked them over for a few hours and cleared them up the best he could. Muuuch better than they were before; so client will be happy with that. All in all, this was a great project….

Chevy Avalanche gets one bright underbody kit

Mon, 07 May 2012 22:59:21 -0700

Had a client come in wanting to get attention for his business when he's out helping local high schools during football games and other sporting events. What better way than some insane flashing lights?

Installed this custom underbody LED kit for him
50 Linear Feet of LED to LED, fully wrapped brightness.
Most underbody kits have around 10-15 feet of neon or LEDs, so you get wheel gap.
This kit was custom installed to provide all around under carriage lighting.

Along with the kit, I installed a wireless 16 setting remote control kit.
He can manually control how bright the lights are, select multiple different strobe settings or turn on breathe mode (my favorite).

GSX-R Bike Lighting Rewire

Mon, 07 May 2012 22:54:04 -0700

Troy brought in his sweet bike to get an HID kit wired into his low beam, as well as rewire all the front faring lights.

While I was in there I also trimmed some panels so that everything lined up better and fit as they should.

His High Beam and "Flash to Pass" features didn't work, so I re-wired all of that so now he'll be safe on the road, especially at night.

Quick Custom Deck Install

Mon, 07 May 2012 22:48:38 -0700

Had a customer bring in his 98 Chevy S10 pickup.
Had the stock deck in there and was putting in a Jensen reciever.
Customer purchased a kit for the replacement but it was the wrong one and budget was tight, so, instead of just throwing it in there, I made him a custom ABS dash kit.
Fit like a glove and you can barely notice it's not a regular kit.

Magazine Coverage

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:18:15 -0700

Was interviewed a month ago for this and it finally hit.
Great Magazine for the industry.
Feels good to be recognized.

Projectors for sale

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:24:26 -0700

Ok, i'm going to post this here so I can easily upload the pics and add a description:

Pair (Two of each)
Valeo 3" Bi-Xenon Projectors
Valeo Slim Mount HID Ballasts
Osram HID Bulbs
New 3" STi-R Clear Lenses (to improve the output/cutoff)

These came out of a GMC Arcadia.
These are in Like-New condition as they were inside an un-damaged headlight.
Ballasts are fine and firing without problems everytime.
Solenoid for the Projectors are perfect and fire everytime.
These also come with brand new 3" STi-R Clear Lenses so you can swap out the stock lenses to improve the output and cutoff of the projector even more than it was from stock.

I picked these up for a project that I'm going a different direction in, so my loss is your gain.
Basic All-in-One projector kits like this start for around $275; I'm willing to sell these for $200 plus shipping OBO.

If you have any questions, feel free to email, text or call.
Thanks

Travis
Trax Customs
Owner
208.577.8167
travis@traxcustoms.com

Aftermarket Headlights on a BMW 540i

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:03:57 -0700

Troy came in with his 97 BMW 540i and some aftermarket DJ Auto headlights.
These have a better projector and CCFL Halo lighting than the stock headlights...even in this case where the car didn't come with HIDs....but he already had a set of cheap aftermarket headlights installed.
All I was simply doing was re-wiring everything and putting the new lights in.

Re-wiring things (solder, tape, zip ties) was easy and difinitely helped the clutted behind the lights.
The tricky part was that the new headlights have CCFL lights, which can sense and turn on with very low voltage; the old lights had halogen halo lights (which is why they were so dim). But Halogen will not turn on with such low voltage, so you couldn't tell that the computer in the BMW is constantly checking to see if the lights are still working. Once the CCFLs were installed, they flickered....randomly....like strobe lights. I rewired them differently 4-5 times until we settled on having them wired into the fog lights for now.
I say for now, as the passenger side headlight came with a bad CCFL halo...so we will be warranty swapping that for a new one. Then the company might have an answer for the CCFL issues. Oh well...I can already tell the output is much better with these lights.....kind of wierd going from an American Cutoff to a European cutoff.....muuuuuch different.

Project One Off Solsti - Foglights almost done

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:57:37 -0700

Been chuggin' away at other projects, but this one is coming along. Just a few more things to do then I can seal these up and ship them out.

This custom made board will be wired into a Plug n Play custom bulb socket that will....well....plug into the stock bulb holder and 'play' nicely with the electrical system.

Trax Rapid Jumper

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:52:52 -0700

Rags brought his 21' Weldcraft with a 450 hp 8.1 liter with a Hamilton 212 pump.
This unit didn't come with a stereo of any kind....so we needed to put something in that will piss off the other fishermen out there.....as well as give him the drivin' music to be able to get up some of those gnarly rapids.

Here is what we installed:
Clarion M309 Marine CD/MP3 Player with USB/iPod inputs
Memphis Marine MR 5.750 5 Channel Amp (80x4, 350x1)
Memphis Power Reference 6.5" Coaxial Speakers up front x 4
Memphis Marine MM62 6.5" Coaxial Speakers in the rear
Digital Designs 12" 1000 series Woofer in a custom made ported enclosure

We were originally going to just put the Power Reference speakers in, but then I remember I had the Marine speakers for the golf cart project....so we used those.
So technically, power-wise, this boat is at:
50x4 up front, 80x2 in the rear and 350x1 for the subwoofer.

The fronts and rear sound perfect...and since it's an aluminum boat, projects the sound all around and does a good job of it.
The DD sub fit perfectly under the boat's front un-used cabin area, and the port loaded off the front live-well perfectly.....deep deeeeep bass inside and it carries VERY well outside...shaking things inside the garage while we were tuning it.

All in all, this boat system does exactly what Rags wanted it to do, all while only installing a very minimal footprint of electronics.