How to Install Whip Lights on Can-Am Maverick X3

Created: 2/13/2020
Length: 10:19

Transcript

The first thing we’re going to do is remove our passenger side seat and then this trim panel, as well as the one on the opposite side, and then this one right here. So we’re going to grab ahold of this panel, pull it straight out, and lift it up. And then we’ll grab this one and remove it as well. Then do the same thing on the opposite side on the front-most panel.

Now, we’re going to grab our wiring harness and locate our rocker switch. Find this plug and disconnect it. That’s going to separate the rocker switch from the rest of the harness. You may have to open up your factory rocker switch holes just enough in order to get our SuperATV rocker switch in there. It shouldn’t take much, maybe just a little minor trimming around the edges and then it will pop right into place. We’re going to take our rocker switch and install it to the left of the steering wheel. We’re going to take our harness portion that’s attached to our rocker switch and feed it through and pop the rocker switch in. Make sure it fully seats and your rocker switch still works.

I like to take the other side of the harness and run it right over top of all of this: the steering shaft, the column, the power steering unit. And then start working my wires back down toward this way. That way, we can feed them underneath the console and connect them.

So we’ve taken our wire and ran it over top of our steering column, steering shaft, power steering unit, and all that. So now we’re just going to let it hang down and walk over to the passenger side.

Now we can take the other wire and feed it through to the other side. Then we can reach through and make our connection real quick on the driver’s side. We’ll come through and tie everything up once we get a little closer to being done.

Now, we’re going to stretch this harness out and find this portion of our connections. This is going to connect to the rear portion of our whip light harness. We’re going to take this and feed it right underneath the frame rail and feed it back up toward you. Now, we have our hot and our ground. We’re going to grab our control box portion of the harness, which is going to have our leads for our left and right lights on it as well. There will be two bullet connectors, one will be black for ground and the other will be red for hot. Go ahead and connect red to red. They can sometimes be a little difficult to get together, but just make sure you push it together until you hear a little click. Once you’ve reached this point, take the rubber coating and slide it up and over top of each other. Then we’ll take a heat gun and melt them down. Then go ahead and do the same with the black.

Now we’re going to locate our control box, which we just previously made the connections for. There’s going to be a right side, or passenger side, and a left side, or driver’s side. We’re going to go ahead and undo the leads and locate the right side. Take it underneath the console and start feeding your wire out toward the back of the machine. Then head to the back, grab ahold of the wire, and pull it through. Make sure you pull enough slack that you can run it up to about the rear fender. That way, whenever we get our whip installed, we can make our connection. So we’re just going to let this wire hang for now and repeat the steps on the other side.

Now, it’s time to get the whip light installed on the machine. We’re running a custom cage setup and we’ve got our speaker bar back here, so we went ahead and made our own custom bracket. Now, we’re going to pull down on the quick disconnect on the whip light and remove our base. Then we’re going to unscrew the nut off of here and install our base to our bracket. The main thing you want to make sure is that it goes: washer, lock-washer, then nut. Just drop it right in here and spin it all the way. Get it hand tight. If you want to, you can come from the bottom with the socket and the extension. We’re just going to use a ratchet wrench here from the top. It doesn’t have to be super tight. Just get it to where it crushes the lock-washer, then we know we’re tight enough.

Once we have our base on there, we’re going to grab our whip light and slide it into position. Lift up on the quick disconnect collar and slide it right in. Rotate it around so that our wiring is hanging down underneath the machine and we’ll bring this up here to make the connection. We’ll show you real quick so it’s easy to understand.

When you look down at each of these plugs, there will be one side of it that’s notched out. On the male plug, there’s a groove with an arrow. And then there’s an arrow right there on the other one. You want to make sure you line the arrows up and goes together nicely. You don’t want to force it. Get them all the way together and then you’ll take your nut that’s on the whip light side of the harness and thread it down as far as you can. You want to make sure it’s nice and tight. That’s going to seal the connection and make sure no water gets in and ruins the connection.

Pull the excess harness down. I recommend leaving just a little bit. That way, if you go to disconnect it or something, you have a little bit of slack to be able to get it together. It makes it a lot easier, especially if you have to load your machine onto the trailer, take the whip lights off, or what-have-you.

Now, we’re going to go ahead and tie up all of our wiring that we have underneath the machine. Then we’re going to head back in the machine, finish up our wiring, and get our panels reinstalled.

Next, we’re going to be hooking up our hot and ground wires that are going to power our whip lights. As you can see, we’ve changed our connectors out for this specific application. You may have to do so. What we’re going to do is take our ground wire and hook it to our center stud on the bus bar here. And then our red wire is going to go to the very top stud on the bus bar.

Now repeat all these steps for the opposite side. Before we go through and re-install all of our trim panels, we’re going to want to test these whip lights out.

First, go into the app store. Whether you have an iPhone or an Android, you’re going to type in “Happy Lighting” and download the app. Once it’s downloaded, open up the app, and turn your machine on. Turn your rocker switch on for your whip lights. Make sure that you’re hooked up to your whip lights. To do this, hit the emblem on the left hand corner, under Group Manage, you’ll see “My Device”. Make sure you’re connected. Once you are, click the power button. As you can see, now ours are on. There are a variety of colors to choose from. There’s a color wheel that you can spin your finger around on to change your color to whatever you’d like. You can link it into your music, you can link it into your voice. With the music and voice both, for example while I’m talking right now, the whips are changing as I talk. It has over 300 patterns for you to choose from. They’re all fully adjustable from the phone.

Now all that’s left to do is reinstall your trim panels as well as your passenger side seat. That’s how super easy and quick it is to install SuperATV’s Whip Lights on this Can-Am Maverick X3. For more information on these whip lights or any of SuperATV’s products, feel free to give us a call at 855-743-3427 or check us out online at superatv.com. Thanks for watching and we’ll catch you next time!