Hello everybody. Long time no post (my bad 😛 )
I haven’t been doing a lot of welding lately, but I did just finish up a project of putting front and rear lights on my zero turn. I did it without drilling a single hole anywhere on the mower. My zero turn is a 54″ John Deere Z425, but it should work on your MTD, Cub Cadet, Hustler, Scat, Ariens, or other mower just the same.
We recently moved to a house that has about an acre and sometimes after work and dinner it is already getting dark out. I have been caught multiple times this month mowing in the dark and not being able to tell where I was going. I finally got annoyed enough to get on Amazon and do something about it.
I ordered these three parts to do this project:
A 21″ light bar, two 4″ round LED lights and a wiring harness with water resistant switch.
Other tools you might need to do this installation yourself:
- About 2 hours (depends on how fast you work, I was taking my time)
- A socket and wrench set
- Electrical tape
- Zip ties
- Wire strippers
- Wire crimpers
- Heat shrink butt connectors
When these parts came in, I was actually pretty impressed with the quality. I had looked at the lights at Northern Tool, but they were just too expensive to put on a lawn mower. These turned out to be great quality, pretty bright, and CHEAP. I will touch on it later, but the wiring harness actually turned out to be nicest wiring harness kit I have EVER dealt with. Unbelievable how easy the harness made these lights to install.
Before you order, make sure you measure your mower to see what will fit. In my case the 21″ light bar fits perfectly between the front caster wheels, and the 6″ round lights work nicely to light up the rear without being too large. I don’t have a roll bar, so if you would rather mount the lights to your roll bar then you will need to take that into consideration.
WARNING: Remember that roll bars are ENGINEERED to protect you in a rollover, DO NOT drill or weld on any roll over protective system!!!! You instantly decertify the ROPS and put yourself at risk of injury if it fails. If you want to put lights on the roll over bar, consider some kind of clamp that does NOT require drilling or welding, or try to find an existing bolt hole that can be used.


I specifically chose this light bar because the mounting points are in a channel that can be moved back and forth. This is very important in my case because the bolt holes I wanted to use are offset due to the way the deck is set up (as seen in above picture).



TIP: I like to use heat shrink butt connectors. Once you strip the wires and crimp them inside the connector, you then take a lighter and use heat to shrink the ends. These are available as a kit on Amazon and are totally worth it. I won’t even buy the non-heat shrink connectors anymore.

The harness kit came with 2 leads. Instead of using one lead for each light, I used one lead for the front light bar and one lead for the two rear lights.




While running the wiring harness, take extra care to be sure it doesn’t get close to any heat sources or moving parts. Every mower will be different.
So easy a 2 year old can figure it out!
Doesn’t interfere with foot placement:
There you go! Hopefully this helps you in your endeavor to add lights to your mower.
Now YOU go outside and build something!
Questions? Comments? Have a success story? Leave a comment below!!