Video Transcript for DIY Installation for the M-3 and Associates Exterior LED Utility Light

Hey, everyone. It's Trevor with etrailer. Today we're doing an overview and an installation of the M3 Flush Mounted Work Light on our enclosed trailer. Now the nice thing about this light is it doesn't just have to be for work site use. It's pretty versatile. You can use it for a wide variety of things, such as our neighbor, he's got a side by side in his trailer.

I'm certain he is gonna be using this for some kind of hunting, whether it be deer, duck, any type of game. Or I've been even thinking about putting this on my race car trailer so that when I'm at the track, I can see better at night. And now with the lights off, you can really see how bright this light is gonna be. So if you get to a campsite late, or maybe you get to a job site early in the morning, you can turn this on and light up that surrounding area pretty well. And the reason you'd be able to light up that surrounding pretty good is 'cause it's putting up 4,500 lumens of light with 19 LED diodes inside of it.

Now the installation of this light wasn't too bad. It is a little bit more of a DIY style. So make sure you set enough time aside for you to get this job done. And it will be dependent on your trailer, but as long as you follow along with our video, we'll get you set up with it. To begin our installation, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our light and kind of get it mocked up on the trailer where we're wanting it to go.

And luckily they gave us a template. So we kind of just held it up about where we wanted it, tried to keep as level as we could. And then we taped up the surrounding area so that when we do cut, if our blade decides to skip on us, it's not gonna damage the surrounding metal. Now I wanna make sure it's level before we start drilling or making any cuts. I'm just gonna measure from the top of the aluminum to this corner edge.

And it looks like we're about eight and seven eighths on this side. On this side, we're about eight and three quarters, it looks like. So we will have to adjust this slightly, just to make sure it's completely level. Now you can see we made a couple changes. We went back and made sure that we had a mark on here for where our studs we inchesre located, and we found out if we stick to this side, it works a little bit better. And we also moved it up a little bit higher, since it is a work light, give it a little bit more area to cover with it higher up on the trailer. And you're not gonna sell it the exact same way most likely. Just make sure that it's up in a good spot for you and that it's also squared off and level. So before we start making any cuts, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a drill bit. We're gonna go to each corner and kind of get it centered up to where the edges of the drill bit line up with these lines. This is just gonna give us a good spot to put our cutting tool in to go up to the four corners. (drill whirls) And another thing you can do is, after you get that one spot drill out where our blade's gonna go, you can take a center punch and put it up on these corners. Give it a good smack, and that's leave a divot in the metal for you. Then you can go back with whatever straight edge tool you're gonna use and draw a line from the corner of the holes to these dots. And now that we're back with everything marked out in place, all you're left to do is take whatever cutting tool you have. We're using an oscillating tool, but you can use a rotary tool as well to get this cut out. (drill whirls) Now once you get close to getting done with cutting out the square, it may be a good idea to grab an extra set of hands to hold onto the piece, so it's not actually vibrating around and making it harder to cut. (drill whirls) So now that we've made the cut on the outside, we will need to make another cut on the inside since our wall is pretty close to the outside of the trailer. So we measured our light and the backside of it actually angles off. So it's about a quarter inch smaller of a hole that we're gonna need to make on ours today. So we measured out this carpenter square to be about an extra quarter inch. Hold it up. And then we're just gonna make a mark on the outside of this square. And once we've done that, we're gonna do the same thing we did with the metal, and we're gonna take our drill bit and punch out these holes and then make our cut. (drill whirls) And now that we got our holes cut out, we're just gonna take off the painter's tape and get this thing sealed up and in place. Now we went ahead and put the butyl tape on. And when you're doing this, you just wanna make sure that you're getting it over the top of the holes, and as close to this edge as possible so that it seals all the way around. Now that we've got our sealant put on the backside of our light, we're gonna go ahead and take our wire and feed it in through the side here, 'cause we're gonna route it up over the top of the stud in the wall. And that's where our wire is gonna run all the way up front. Now this part, I would recommend having a set of hands, just to help you guide it in there, make sure everything's sitting flush before you start making any drill marks so that you can put your self-tapping bolts in. And now that our butyl tape is kinda holding this in place for us, we're just gonna take a few self-tapping bolts and run them down. Now whenever you're putting these self-tapping bolts in too, keep in mind that this is very thin sheet metal. So you will wanna take your time, go at a slow speed so you don't end up stripping out that hole, 'cause if you do, you're gonna have to find another spot to actually put a self-tapping bolt in and potentially make a little bit of a larger cut. But when I'm doing this, I'm gonna start with one of the corners. I'm gonna shoot over diagonally until I get all four corners and then I'll put the two middle in. After we put those self-tappers in, we gave it a second to make sure everything was sitting nice and flush, and no extra sealant was coming out the sides. We went around the outside, trimmed off any of the extra butyl tape and ran a couple beads of silicone around the outside to make sure it was nice and sealed up. Now we can jump inside and take a look at how we did the wiring. And what we did is we took an in between here. We had a piece of plywood and then the sheet metal outside. We put the wire in between there, routed it up around this stud that was here. And behind this wood paneling, came across this stud as well and then routed it down to this electrical switch. We also had some extra 110 wire that we took, connected to the switch, ran up, and all the way along this wood, following it to the front of our V-Nose trailer. So that conduit there went straight down and into that circuit breaker box, and we had an extra circuit breaker on our neighbor's trailer and we just wired it up to there. Well, I hope this video helped you in determining if the M3 Flush Mounted Work Light is gonna be a good option for you and your enclosed trailer. And I hope this video also helped making that installation process just a little bit easier on you. My name's Trevor, and thank you for watching.