Question about wiring switches for LED bar and pods.

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This may be a good thread to post this in. I'm planning on wiring up lower light bar ditch lights and fog lights on my 2016 Tacoma. The switches I'm getting has the light you can hook up to your dash lights to illuminate the words without the accessory being on. My question is how could I wire all 3 switches to do that? Would it be safe to just jump a wire from one switch to another?

 

If you can identify the dash light "hot" wire on a nearby switch or display. If you're mounting near the fuse box, you should be able to tap the "TAIL" circuit as well. If you're handy with a crimp tool, it's not hard to build a line to connect multiple switches with one wire if they're installed somewhat close together. 22ga wire should be fine to connect to the dash lights, and if you strip a half inch long piece in the middle of the wire it'll fit a 18ga crimp connector (use 1/4" female tab connectors for most switches) if you fold the bare stretch in half.

 

Little back story: I installed bed lights in the back of a 2nd gen tacoma by using a mini add-a-fuse to power the lights. They come on without the ignition but require the parking or headlights on to be powered via a in dash four prong switch similar to the mictuning switch. The switch itself has 2 leds one to illuminate the other comes on with the bed lights on. I wanted to wire the switch so the top led dims with the dash lights. I tapped the green line from another near by switch as bmgreene suggested early in this thread. However just the opposite results happened after adjusting the rolling dim switch. The dash lights turn down and my switch lights up. I tapped some of the other 3 wires going into this factory original switch and they either power the light w/ no effect from dimmer or don't light it up at all. I have a multimeter and did many test to find what made sense to me. I remember one of the wires going neg. on the read out, maybe this means something? Any ideas? It takes a lot to get to that dimmer switch so I wanted to have a plan before cracking into it. Thanks,

 

For reading wire voltage with a multimeter, the black lead should be on a ground point. If you accidentally get a "hot" line with the black lead, you can get negative voltage readings in DC. Also, the dash dimmer circuit is a little wierd on the 2nd gen tacomas (maybe most toyotas?) Since the dimmer on the dash actually raises the voltage on the "ground" side of the dash lights in that circuit rather than adding resistance on the "hot" side of the lights to decrease the net volts across the lights themselves.

I've pretty much given up on getting any of my after market switches to dim with the rest since it's so much easier to just ground them out to the regular ground vs chasing down the dimmer wire thats closest to each bank of switches but most of my dash-installed switches light up either blue or green so they really don't look "stock" anyway

 

Thank you for your reply. I agree it's probably more work and not much reward as the switch I ordered is more yellow than the red/orange they claim it to be. Oh well. So if I follow you correct the ground would also need to be included in the dim circuit some how? And not just grounded right out of the switch as I have it.

 

You might be able to hook the "ground" for the switch LEDs into the dimmer circuit for the factory dash lights to make them dimmable since the dimmer in the dash actually increases the voltage in that line (as far as I've been able to tell). It seems like a screwy way to do things, but it might be that it's necessary to avoid having the parking and tail lights change brightness with the dash lights since they're essentially on the same circuit. If you do figure out how to make it work, you'll know more than I do.

 

Sorry to hijack this thread, but quick question regarding wiring leds to a oem style switch. The lights have two wires, black and red. I plan to ground the lights inside the engine bay area and run the power to the switch. Do i also have to ground the switch?

 

If the switch is lit, you'll need to ground it for its internal LEDs, and it'll have an extra pin for that purpose. If it's just a simple SPST On/Off switch with no internal light, it should only have two connections, one will go to the supply voltage and the other will go to the accessory or relay depending on how you're wiring up the system.

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/wiring-toyota-push-buttons-for-led.536925/

Thought id throw this in here. Creating a how to thread on wiring switches for all to benefit from

 

Thanks
I am also looking for the same information about wiring. But I am planning to attach a toggle switch as there is no switch connected will it be ok to connect a toggle switch with LED. As I am having it or should I use the push button switch?

 

real quick
any reason why my light bar switch no longer has power? Bad fuse? Bad ground?

 

@bmgreene you should make a YouTube video on this! I’m wanting to achieve the same thing when I get my ditch lights in with oem switch and I’m trying to understand all your info but it’s confusing me more each time! I understand you need to “piggyback” some wires together but which one(s)?
Thanks

 

This seems like as good a thread as any to ask: should I be able to remove these pins and put them back in? I just got a set of BD Squadron Pros and trying to make a hole big enough to run that switch through the firewall seems like a bad idea. I'd rather not cut and resolder things if I don't have to, but I'm not familiar with this type of connector and don't want to break anything.

 

We use a female spade connector to our switch, which is removable. I would just make sure you pay attention to the orientation of the wires and pull from the female spade connector itself with needle nose pliers. Make you don't pull from the wires to risk damage from the crimp.

 

Thanks @Baja Designs, I ended up ordering a different harness which includes a relay as I'm hoping to use an OEM style switch. However, the new harness has only two wires coming out to the switch which I've never seen before. I'd expect three - pos/neg/acc to run back to the relay.

This is the wiring diagram for the switch I have, how should I be adding this?


This is the harness I ended up with: https://www.bajadesigns.com/products/squadron-s2-wire-harness-2-lights-max-150-watts.asp

 

I currently have half my switches wired up wrong with the dash lights (they come up when the rest of the dash dims down), and I think I've actually burned out another one from wiring it wrong. I know enough about electrical to know what needs to be done, but as far as the specifics of doing it on a real truck, it'd be pretty risky for anyone to follow my step-by-step advise