Installing Blue Sea Outlet in bed - 2nd Gen Tacoma - Writeup with pictures!

I plan on having a fridge for my camping trips and needed a good power point in the bed:



Decided to mount it on the passenger side, right above the existing bed outlet:



I love templates!





Removed the existing cubby box to allow access:



Drilled holes and ran wiring:



Then drilled some small pilot holes for the mounting screws:



I then decided to whore out the caulking to help water proof these connections:



Not pretty, but I dont care:



Installed panel and ran wiring directly to battery for a simple operational test:





Now let's run the wiring, using an existing loom I followed and merged with zipties:



Following along the frame:





Moar zipties!



Ran the wiring up the fender on the passenger side:



Up the fender and into the engine bay. Cowl was removed for other reasons, no need to remove for this project:



Ran the wiring in some loom along with the wiring from the light bar from a previous install:



Time for some connectors:



Ran directly to Blue Sea fuse box for an "always hot" application:





Final Picture:

 

The blue sea outlet came with a small 2 AMP fuse, I CUT that out and attached the wires together.

There is no point in having a fuse back there and another fuse that the Fuse Block terminal. Figured the fuse at the Blue Sea Terminal was easier to access in the event of failure.

 

I think there is, if the new circuit is rated below that of main fuse block. I’m no electrician but doesn’t a 2-amp fuse indicate the panel is not designed to support more than 2 amps? The wiring looks to be 18 gauge. So, the max amps you should be running is 16 amps, but you need to watch the voltage drop for the length of wire you are running. To keep voltage drop to less than half a volt, you need to keep the Power draw under 5 amps. See calculator in link below.

And, why didn’t you use wire loom to protect the wiring? Its cheap insurance. Be sure to follow the directions of the fridge you get.

https://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm

 

thank you for this.

The wire loom will be added on a later date.

I plan to have backup lights and when I run that wiring I will add some loom.