Wiring Bed Lights

Hello everyone,

I am in the middle of the project and just came to a complete halt because of a wiring brain fart. So here's what I got:

I have LED strip lights in my bed and I have run the +/- to the kick panel inside the cab. I want to control them with the illuminate rocker switches from mictuning that come with the wiring harness like the one below. I want to wire it to constant hot so I can turn them on without the car on. I have plenty of wire t-taps and add-a-fuses, but am stuck right now because I can't figure out what to wire to what. I've searched, but have only found people wiring them to the dome lights or to non-constant hot or to switches in the bed. Please help. Thanks in advance!

 

This is what I was thinking. Tell me if I got it correct:

+ from bed lights connect to green on harness.
Red 1 to add a fuse (still need to figure out which fuse to add to)
Red 2 to t-tap into a dash light wire (still need to figure out which wire that is)
Black to ground

 

Odd wiring colors, but it looks like green to constant hot, black to ground, red 1 to bed lights (relay recommended but the draw on LED bed lights may be low enough) and red 2 should connect to your parking lights circuit so the switch is illuminated when you have your lights on at night.

Green should be fused and can either run to the battery or you can use a t-tap on one of the constant hot circuits in the fuse box.

 

This is the way I interpret it too. Good luck OP

 

Spot on.

Also when I wired my bed lights....I went straight to the battery with a fused lead. Easiest way to go.

 

Best choice for the constant hot circuit in the fuse box? I'd like to not have to go directly to the battery. And do you know which wire the parking lights is?

 

You need to decide the best choice when selecting constant hot - I don't want to give you advice that overloads any of your current circuits. If it were me and I wasn't wiring direct to the battery I might use an add-a-fuse tap on the headlight circuit. Put a meter on the fuses to figure out which circuits are constant hot, then decide the pros and cons of tapping that circuit.

I don't know the wire color of the parking light circuit but it's probably in a multitude of threads here on TW.

Good luck.

 

Thanks to everyone that replied!

 

I just wired up the same switch as yours, just a different symbol on the front. If wired correctly, there will be a blue light operated when the headlights turn on and a brighter blue light when the switch is on. On my 2016 SR5 I found an unused connector behind the left kick panel that had a GND, always HOT wire, and a dash light on HOT. With the kick panel off, there is a series of connectors mounted vertically. Now I'm going off of memory, so I might not be 100% on with my comments. Behind and to the right of the vertical connectors is an unused white connector that's folded back and tied together with white tape. I un-taped it which made it more accessible. The thin white with grey dots wire is GND which goes to (4) BLACK, the thin green wire is HOT with lights on. That feeds your (3) RED2 wire. There is a violet wire, not sure what that does so ignore it. Your left with 2 heavy wires, I don't recall the colors, but one is always HOT. That feeds your (1) GREEN wire. I used an inline fuse holder with that wire. The (2) RED 1 wire feeds your lights. In my case the switch only was rated for 3 amps, so i fed a 20 amp relay with the RED 1 which fed my lights. Hope this helps.

 

@bunsojr I made a post and wiring diagram here:

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...led-bed-light-kit.376477/page-7#post-10987724

This should point you in the right direction OP!