Cheap/Free Mods

AdrenaliNate gave me a good idea with his under hood light, but I wanted to use other things with a cig plug up near the front. I have a 2 million candle power spot light that's useful now and then, but I hate running the cord out the door or window (with the keys in the ignition). So I installed a sig plug under the hood to compliment the one I have in the bed. Now I can use either light at the front OR rear of the truck!

Parts needed:

• Magnetic mount light with 10ft retractable cord ($3-$4 at Wal-Mart, K-Mart, etc)
• all weather cig plug ($7 or so at Wal-Mart)
• inline fuse
• misc wire, spade connectors, crimp eyes, quick connects
• pin switch (got mine at Autozone for maybe $3)
• shrink tube, electrical tape or liquid electrical tape (figured I'd try that stuff. seals connectors well, but takes 10 minutes to 4 hours to fully dry. And drips.)
• self tapping screws or rivets
• rubber bumpers (to make contact with switch and not scratch paint. Found at hardware store in same section as furniture slides, pads, levelers, etc.)

The light is the same as here: http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/technical-chat/4838-cheap-free-mods-8.html#post60443
So I'll skip to how mine is different.

Cig plug screwed to fended side:


Pin switch closes ground when hood is open:


Rubber bumper to push pin switch:


I'll add some pics when it's dark, but it should light up just like the previous post about these lights.

UPDATE:
I had an issue with the plastic bumper moving and not pushing the pin down. Truck sat over night with the light on twice and would not start the next day. So I found a plastic spacer (bolt/screw spacer?) from a misc. hardware kit that came with a plasma TV wall mount kit. I drilled it out so the pin head fit tightly, pushed it on enough that it wouldn't come off, and filled the hole with hot melt glue so it wouldn't push down over the pin. (The truck's been on a charger for 2-3 hours now and still at 85% full so you get an idea how much this one light can drain the battery.)

Spacer:


One more pic: http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/technical-chat/4838-cheap-free-mods-11.html#post65754

 

We all know the stock reverse lights kinda suck. I found a CHEAP set of driving lights at Wal-Mart for $15. No relay, but I had several in my pocket from the last trip to the junkyard.

Parts:

• $15 driving lights (smallest, cheapest I could find. APPEAR to be metal housing and glass lenses so they SHOULDN'T melt....)
• 4 self taping screws
• wire from battery to driver side tail light (I have a spool of 10gauge laying around so I used that.)
• relay
• inline fuse holder (lights came with a cylinder fuse, but I hate those and have melted a couple of the clear housings they come with)
• misc spade connectors, crimp eye, quick connects, quick splice
• shrink tube, electrical tape, etc

First, the lights.


Mounted to the bumper with self taping screws (2 each).



Quick splice into pink(red?) wire with stripe on tail light harness. This activates the relay.



Location of relay behind driver side tail light. (Tucked up above the metal bracket to get out of the way of the tail light.)

 

I routed the power wire for the passenger side through the hitch to get it out of the way.

Driver side:



Passenger side:



The lights came with 6" or so ground wires with an eye on one end. I just put each one under one of the self tapping screws holding the lights to the bumper.

You can kind of see it under the right screw in the close up of one light above.

Wires from tail light, along driver side of truck, up along driver side of engine.



Wires connected to batter: (ignore the mess. I'll redo everything with an aux fuse box when I do dual battery.)

 

Engine bay light:



Decided to wedge it here: (There's some random wire on the back side of it that will keep it in place.)

 

Reverse lights: (Damn these suckers are B-R-I-G-H-T!!)

 

good setup pt!! i may go the pin switch route later on, but for now....i think im gonna just mount a 12v plug-in in the engine compartment and leave it like that for a bit. the pin switch idea is kickass. also....i think i'll add one of those 12v plug-ins into one of my cubbys so i can put one of my small lights in there, plug it in, and i'll have a bed light. that way....i wont have to mess with alot of switches right now.

 

Thanks! I like the bed outlet too. I plug my spot light into it to light up my buddy's garage when we're packing things up at night. He doesn't have electric in there and I usually bring one of my 100' cords over for lights and tools while working in there. So having the light in the back of the truck helps see what the heck we're doing!

I plan on doing dual battery in a year or so, and then I'll rewire the reverse lights so I can turn them on for the same thing. Being relatively high powered driving lights I don't really want them on if the engine's not on. I've drained batteries before by leaving fogs on by accident so I want no chance of that happening until I have that second battery to isolate the main, starting battery. (Will also help clean up the engine bay. Too many damn wires to the battery now.) I actually stopped and realized I have 3 fused lines off the battery now and said "I need to do something about this...." lol

Once I figure out the second battery deal I'll add a fuse box and clean everything up. In the mean time there's extra wire so I have room to move things when the time comes.

 

Yeah, I didn't think about that either the first time I wanted to use them years ago. Then I talked to a car alarm installer, and he said they stopped using those for trunks and hoods. Apparently those two zones (or the whole system, I forget) wouldn't arm if you were parked on ANY sort of incline. So I pretty much dropped them from my inventory of things to use after that! Even they use pin switches for hood and trunk alarms now apparently.

 

Well they are right, but inclination to activate these lights are about 45º and the most pronounced "hills" here in south Texas are those bumps in the middle of the street..., other than that are mountains... but those are from San Antonio to the North and West..

 

Well, they might work for you. I don't know. I guess you'd have to make sure the truck was level, then level the tilt switch with spacers or something. Otherwise the angle of the hood (since it's sloped and not flat) would add to whatever angle the truck is parked on. Obviously they worked in the past, but I'd rather not deal with it. This way I know they'll only be on when the hood is open. I've had dead batteries too many times from lights left on.

 

Using a pin switch was my first option, but since I found these tilt lights and running cables was a lot less mess (cable and connections)... my final installation was cleaner. Since I started moding my Tacoma with electrical add-ons, I have installed a fused box from where I'm attaching everything I have done so far (getting the advise from this forum), I began with a 6 position fused box and I replaced that almost immediately with a 12 position enclosed fused box -marine grade- and everything below my chassis is protected with wire-loom, It took me a lot of trips to the local stores to do everything 100% the correct way from the very begining and I know I can live worry less having all this protection. I will take in consideration the 12v power point under the hood it is worth and I have one left from my last mod, I will do it this weekend along with the hood struts and a 12v hella marine fan for my camper... we already got 100ºF this past week and a cool breeze is more than welcome.

 

Nice! I want to do a fuse box too once I figure out where to put everything.

Something like this maybe:

 

Awesome! ... Do you know what kind of battery is that? (I mean to fit in a space so tight) it is great... On the long term I'm planning to do a two battery setup and this clear some of the main questions (And problems) Where to place the second one?

 

It's an Odyssey PC1700. http://www.odysseybatteries.com/

Probably good for accessories, but maybe not for the main one. I have a jeep buddy with one as his main and I had to jump start him several times one day while wheeling. It just didn't have quite enough juice to crank the engine over fast enough after a few attempts at starting after it sucked in water.

I saved the full write up from TTORA if you want a zip file of it. Too big to upload here.

Edit:

Maybe it's a 925... I'm having trouble figuring out his old parts list and the revised one...

 

Thanks PT, It took me long to thank you this one, busy work day.

Regards.

 

np. I'm out of work so I don't have much else to do.

 

Daylight Summer Time is coming....!!!!!! Yes... I will immediately have 1 hour more to spend after work doing something other than TV on weekdays… it does not matter to be awake one hour early… I used to it.

 

To begin with I have no pictures. Mud flaps hang too low and scrape against most anything. Described below is how I modified them:

1. placed paper against interior (closest to tire) of the flap
2. paper will hang down after securing it with tape
3. Moved to outside of flap and used a marker to trace the bottom curved portion of the flap onto the paper.
4. removed the paper from the inside of the flap and cut the curved pattern I traced on the paper. You now have a sheet of paper that is approx. same size and width of flap along with the same shape (curve) of the bottom of flap
5. Place the paper on the outside of the flap and raise it however much you want to remove of the flap. I measured 3" from the bottom of the flap up.
6.with the paper taped to the flap, mark the flap with a marker using the paper as a guide. You'll end up with a nice curved line 3" above the bottom of the flap that exactly matches the curved portion of each flap
7. I used a dremel with a cutoff disc to follow the marked line on the flap
8. 3" of flap was removed and the flap still maintained the original curve at the bottom
9. remove excess pieces of rubber from the flap with fingers/file
10. I placed my truck on ramps to make access easier

 

Great... just what we were looking to make this piece of junk to wrok properly, BUT I will be honest I will not do this one until I heard back from Toyota or after my 36,000 miles or 3 years of ownership... if they last if not I will request a free replacement.

 

I just took mine off since the damn things break too easy, and tore a section of the fender out when one snapped off.

I'll only put flexible rubber ones back on if I want them. The stock ones don't flex enough to not shatter if they hit something. Not sure if 3" would've saved mine, but it can't hurt. They're so damn low in stock form.