Live Camper shell wiring help

TW brethren,

I'm finally getting around to doing my camper shell wiring this holiday weekend.

I have ZERO electrical skills, so I'm going to document the whole thing and would appreciate live assistance tomorrow 5/26/13 from 10-11AM Pacific standard time. I will be following printouts of TW thread info and youtube videos, but wanted to document the whole effort on TW for others in the future.

If anyone feels they are pretty good with electronics, please participate in this thread tomorrow to help me complete the project.

The following pics are of the two quick disconnects that the shell came with on my used Snugtop Rebel. I'm going to replace them with two sets I purchased at Pep-Boys and wire up the 3rd brake light and internal light power.

 

You should have one hot wire and one ground coming from your taillight/stoplight into that shell. That's it. Two wires, one hot, one ground. Pretty simple. Mate them to the shells wires and voila you have the third brake light. Mate them up as shiners first to make sure you have the correct polarity, then crimp them into the connector, throw a fuse in there on the hot wire just in case. My shell has a 5 amp fuse (yellow) the shop installed.

You shouldn't need any tech support, it's a simple install. Get some flex conduit to encase the wires so it looks pretty.

 

It'll be four wires for him, he wants to power the dome light in the shell also. I have to tackle the same project. Have'nt decided if I want to take power off the parking lights or run an allways hot wire back so I can use the light whenever I want.

 

I am going to tackle it as coming off the parking lights, but eventually I plan on running a few 12v lines back to power OBA, a couple extra power sockets in the shell and the dome itself. For now though, it's going to the rear left brake light since I have to take it off anyway for the brake.

 

Shite, I just realized I don't know which of the two wire harnesses goes to the shell light and which goes to the brake. It's all in one conduit that runs under the shells carpet/headliner. Crap.

I had planned to put one male and one female quick disconnect on the shell and the same on the truck so there was no way to connect it wrong, but I may have to nix that and just make a mark when I figure out which is which.

 

Maybe you should do what I just did - run a hot wire from the battery to a four-way connector, then spread it out to a 4-switch panel and four fuse panel.

Connect the third brake light only to the stoplight. The rest of your power comes directly from the battery, and all your grounds are through another 4-way connector to the bolt at the back end of the bed, there's two of them right at the top of the bed.

Here is my bird nest pic, it's ugly but it works fine. The switch panel and the fuse panel are Velcro'd to the shell liner, very solid. The white and black connectors you see are the shell third brake light connector and the fuse box for it. The rest of the mess is slack I wanted in just in case I want to move the switch panel and the fuse panel up onto the top of the shell (it's Velcro'd so I can move it anywhere on the shell as I please).

So I have two slots left on the switch panel and the fuse panel for future projects.:

 

Not a bad approach! Long term I may do something similar.

 

So, do you have a TV in your garage so you can watch the Indy 500 while you're digging into that shell?

 

Nope making some progress though..

 

Turned out the mystery was easy to solve. Some smart boy at snugtop figured out that this would be a problem so you can clearly see inside the dome light white and orange wires, which makes it clear which is which. White and pink = 3rd brake light.

 

Complete success! Pics later..

 

Here is the final result and how-to thread for other newbs like me who want a step by step instruction thread w/pics. Hope it helps someone!

http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/te...ep-step-picture-load-warning.html#post6945929