Show off your aux fuse panels.

For in-cab grounding or if you live in a dry climate that’s ok but if you think about it both the sheet metal and frame of the truck are steel and prone to corrosion. If that’s an issue where you live then running wires back to tinned or plated buss bars with a cable to the battery instead of the engine chassis ground might result in fewer problems in the long run. Sealed or better still flux tight relays are also an upgrade option.
Edit-marine wire is tinned under the insulation and much more resistant to corrosion.

 

Thank you, I will keep that in mind. I'm not very familiar with the electrical aspect of things, relays and switches were my next thing to research.
The relay setup sounds simple enough, but I'm a pretty visual learner so videos or tutorials are my go to.

Right now the only thing I have is a CB radio which very rarely gets used, and an under hood LED strip. The fuse block will hopefully keep things tidy, and ready for my future accessories. Compressor, reverse lights, and Blue Sea below deck for the bed of the truck are likely next.

No issues with frame rust here, BUT I will likely take the extra precautions. Tinned copper wire was on my order list- the silicone insulated wire I use for my r/c cars seems like a good choice. Pricey though!

 

Some of you guys have such a clean setup. My wires keep stock piling as I added more and more stuff. It's hard to contain. I probably should have spent the money on a relay box that supported the amount of things I have but there was a large price difference between the 6 relay box vs the higher end ones

 

A bigger box just means even more crowded cabling. Consider adding panels for in cab stuff and for in bed stuff to both alleviate the crowding and shorten wire runs. Also stagger the wire lengths to each connector from a given box.

 

Progress so far.

 

Contemplating building another panel for inside the cab. Where would a good location be? I'm leaning towards somewhere in the rear as I don't want to give up console or glove box storage.

 

I put an 8-way fuse panel under the cup holders but mine’s a manual with more room. Also in there are the aftermarket seat heater modules, heated mirror delay module, some air solenoids, some air manifold stuff, and a ground buss so I only have one main ground return back to the engine bay. The fuses are easier to access than the dash panel. Leaving off the yellow clips also makes it easier to pull the cup holders for cleaning.

 

Looks good. I like the grommet on the cable to the fuse block.

 

Good eye, thank you. I'm currently trying to figure out a way to protect the accessory wires as well, this is going to be slow going with what I imagine will be several revisions.

 

Made my own bracket to mount the mini-fuse and relay module into the passenger side of the engine bay near the firewall. This is just about as far from the vehicle battery as one can get in the engine bay but there was a ton of room just asking for something to go there.

 

Couldn't decide how to mount relays, so I went with a time consuming removable mount. New screws on the way, so ignore the oddball sizes. Ran out of space so 5th relay got a side mount.

 

Sorry for the bad drawing, but does this look correct?

I was planning to run a bus bar for one leg of all the switches. Then from the other leg of the switch to pin 86 on each relay. The bus bar was to take up one fuse slot. My idea was to save spots on the fuse block for other potential items in the future. Also to help with not needing to do an add a circuit.

 

That drawing looks correct. For power to my switches I just spliced all of the wires together and ran a single wire to the fuse. I did the same thing to ground #85. Your drawing doesn't show the ground on your lights, which either be a bus bar or factory ground points depending on the location. On my Taco, I use the factory ground point on the driver side frame right above the rear wheel for grounding stuff in the bed, I use the factory ground point below the cab fuses inside the cab, and in the engine bay I use the ground point by the battery.

 

I finally got to working on accessories in the cab: power to auxiliary switches, always on USB, inverter, compressor. For these I'm using a Blue Sea fuse block in the cab. This is located next to the factory fuses behind the break pedal. It is also right next to the grommet that leads to the engine bay so I could minimize the length of wire that goes back to the main fuse there. The negative bus is grounded to the factory ground point which is located below the factory fuse panel in the cab.


The lose connectors in the photo above are from a harness that goes to the bed. I'm putting switches in the bed that control the same auxiliary lights as the switches in the cab.

 

Thanks! Yeah the lights were likely going to be grounded to whatever nearby factory ground is. Not going to be running that many lights, I just drew a weird lightbulb for reference. I was debating on a bus bar for ground, seems like it would help with future trouble shooting. But it also adds a lot more wires. Under the hood I ground next to the battery as well. Going to write down that grounding point for the bed, I was looking for that damn thing all day saturday lol.

 

A common practice for the switches that trigger relays is to daisy chain the power for the switches and have individual wires from each switch to its relay. The current is small (100mA per relay) so a 3-5A fuse is plenty for a switch bank. Each relay will still require a dedicated fuse that supplies the power for the accessory.The relay ground wires are just sinking that 100mA switch current so those can be daisy chained. If you tie everything to the chassis it’s a good idea to upgrade the oem chassis cable to the battery. The reason for avoiding chassis grounds is corrosion, if that never happens to your truck then no problem, do as you please.

 

Thanks for the tip, is my diagram off? What your explaining sounds very similar to what I was going to do, unless I'm understanding it wrong. Sorta slow on this type of stuff, it's not my strong suite.

So what I have pictured in my head unless the drawing is wrong:
One fuse slot will be wired to a + bus bar- which will tie in one post from each of the mechanical switches.
The other post from each switch will be wired to each relay via pin 86
Pin 30 for each relay will get it's own dedicated fuse slot on the fuse block.
Pin 85 from each relay are all tied into the grounding portion of the fuse block.
Pin 87 from each relay will power whatever accessory I have, then either ground on a factory point nearby or go back to a grounding busbar (undecided)

The battery to frame grounding cable (closest to the battery) was changed to a 4 gauge.
Grounding cable from fuse block to body is also 4 gauge. I was going to up the wire size on the small ground wire from starter to body (closest to driver side shock tower) but haven't done that yet.

 

Addition my previous comment:
Best I can do with Paint.

 

Sounds good but save wire by daisy chaining the relay grounds rather than having each one grounded to the buss bar separately. There’s a really good tutorial on this stuff in the thread:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/diy-build-and-install-a-bussmann-rtmr-fuse-relay-block.399454/
It specifies the Bussman rtmr but the techniques are universal and there’s a specific section on daisy chaining. In short, the ground wire from the buss bar gets a connector on the buss bar end and the other end gets a connector with an additional wire which goes to a connector with an additional wire…. Same thing is done for the power supplied to the switches. It covers heat shrink, wire loom, lots of info about lots of stuff, a really fantastic resource.