Yesterday I did the physical mounting of the OPT7 triple LED light bar and fiddled around with the positioning to get it clear of the tailgate opening, which is no small challenge.
In my case I mounted the 4 clips on the plastic fascia panel, spaced equidistant across the panel with spacers under each. I used 1" self-tapping screws on the outside and bolts/wingnuts on the inner clips. I may go back and use bolts/wingnuts on the outside clips for better strength. The one factor to deal with is that the fascia panel is curved - probably 1/2" farther away from the bumper in the center and closer on the outsides, which means thicker/taller spacers in the center vs. the outside edges, depending on where you place the clips.
I trial fit a number of times and tested the tailgate and found it touching every time until I decreased the spacer thickness and ended up with rubber washers as spacers on the outsides, about 1/8 inch (and probably compressed to somewhat less than this) and 3/8 in the middle spots. I'll check with a straight edge to see how close to flat the bar is, but there is some flex possible when it is mounted. There's also molded "bumps" on the very outsides of the fascia panel that keep you from mounting the bar flush directly on the fascia. When the bottom light row is about flush with the level of the bumper and the clip spacers are short enough, the tailgate clears with a few millimeters to spare. There is very little room (tolerance) to show well out back and miss the tailgate lip when opening, but it does fit and looks great when you get it positioned right. Hopefully 4 clips are sufficient to keep the bar from coming loose, but maybe I will figure out some invisible way to zip tie the thing as a fail-safe.
I have to zip tie up all the harness this evening...
But a question for @grinch72 (maybe I don't understand something): Why did you make that little 6 inch harness from both ends of the Hopkins 5-way kit? It seems like the light bar plugs right into the Curt 56584 5-way and you could just put a bullet connector on the white (reverse) wire and stick it into the one remaining open one (reverse) in the Curt? I am not sure why you made that adapter other than removing the bar with the single bullet connector wire might be fragile and fiddly if you had do it more than a time or two, therefore the 5-wire to 5-wire quick disconnect. Thanks for any explanations.
Not understanding the 6-inch harness functionality, I have just plugged the 4-wire plug directly into the Curt 56584. I sacrificed the unused OPT7 "hardwire adapter" 4-wire pigtail from the kit and used razor knife to cut one bullet-plug worth of connector with one wire off the molded 4-wire plug, then spliced that onto the bar's white bare wire and plugged that into the remaining Curt 56584 socket. All works fine.
I'll be sending the Hopkins 5-way plug set back to Amazon.
PS - I took a look at the light bar at night - quite cool. The backup lights make a huge difference lighting up the invisible area behind the truck. The OPT7 bar does not come on if you quick tap the brake, it needs about 1 second to light up.
Thanks for sharing all the info to put this together.
