Accessory Lighting and Wiring Megathread (open discussion)

After months and months of research and countless YouTube videos watched, I find myself needing more that what has been provided. I am starting this thread to document my successes and failures as I try to wire my accessory lights into my truck.

The goals of my wiring project are:

1. Safe
2. Reliable
3. Expandable
4. Factory-esque appearance (no rat's nests or multi-colored wires strewn across the engine bay, roof, or truck

My accessories (so far):

• BD S8 40" Lightbar (clear)(spot) [704001]
  • Watts: 224w
  • Amps: 16.24A
• BD S8 30" Lightbar (amber)(work/scene) [703006]
  • Watts: 168w
  • Amps: 12.17A
• BD Squadron Pro Ditch Lights (clear)(driving/combo) [49-7803] x2
  • Watts: 40w (ea)
  • Amps: 2.90A (ea)
• BD Rock Lights (clear) [39-8050] x4
  • Watts: 5w (ea)
  • Amps: 0.4A (ea)

Electrical Accessories:

• PowerTrays Blue Sea 12 Circuit tray w/ accessory bundle
  • Blue Sea 12-circuit fuse block
  • Blue Sea MRBF terminal fuse holder
  • Busman 100A circuit breaker
  • 125A MRBF fuse
  • 18" power cable
  • 6" power cable
  • 22" ground cable
• Miscellaneous
  • 16 awg SXL primary wire
    • black
    • red
    • green
    • blue
  • 4-pin relays
  • Soldering equipment/supplies
• UpTop Overland Alpha Rack Wiring Harness
  • BD Scene Pods (aka BD Rock Lights)
  • BD S8 40" lightbar
• Optima Yellow Top Group 34 battery
  • CCA: 750A
  • Voltage: 12VDC

 

I made some initial wiring diagrams. I already see a couple potential difficulties. The biggest one being how to reduce the 8wires from 4 work lights into 2 wires and toss in a relay and switch.

 

Other random pics from the parts collection phase:

 

I didn’t go over all of it. But it looks good to me.
Only thing I see was you might have forgotten to draw the ground wire on one of the Ditch Light Relays.
(The first one on the left - First picture)

I will follow this, I find this stuff interesting.
This should be a clean build. Nice

 

First up: Trying to solve the 4:1 reduction (x2) for my rock lights. Outside of a nasty and ugly mess of spliced-together wires using butt connectors, I'm thinking a busbar is probably best?

 

2:1 reduction is easy, just use a open barreled crimp. Great choice of connectors also, another good place to get them is prowireusa.com
first vid that popped up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6H5Tqobf9M

personally i would just go with a switch pro to make it all clean. or one of the bussmann setups. Never a fan of a bunch of relays all over

 

Why are you treating the Tacoma as a fiberglass buggy/boat with no available chassis ground?

 

There are a bunch of chassis grounding points all over. Not worried about grounding points.

 

I know the current trend is for hi end fuse holder and switches but to me it's looks like just more failure points. A simple 12V bus bar with a single lead from the battery, then all other harness go to bus bar, each harness is fused and relayed. Control by manual switch or wireless remote.

 

Ok so I have all these switches I still want to use But I want to clean up my engine bay. I’ve checked out the Amazon 6 gang switch panel dji 4x4, but I don’t want to use the green light panel that has. Any advise?

 

Replace the cubby pocket on the left with a switch panel and use the OEM style.

AirOnBoard has a bunch of styles/colors.

or SDHQ has other solutions if you don’t want to use a switchpro.

my switches:

 

Installed the power tray with blue sea panel.
Also wired the ditch light and bumper LED bar.

“Burn Ya Bastard” switch being repurposed for a roof rack BD S8 lightbar.

Still working on rack harness loom. Waiting more wiring and DT connectors.

I’ll post more when I get to that point.