Bed cubby power panel progress

Some tinkering in the garage tonight.

I’m installing a fuse panel in my drivers side bed cubby. The fuse panel is for some lighting I have planned for my canopy roof rack.

I’ll post some progress shots here.

I made a back-plane from Fiberglass that will mount inside the cubby, and hold the fuse panel and 3 relays for the 3 lighting circuits I have planned. I want to pre-wire this, then bolt it to the back of the cubby with the long 5/16” bolts you see. Some high quality foam on the back will assist in dampening any vibrations.

In addition, I’ve got a 12V power outlet in the door, and a dual USB and voltmeter for usable power in the bed. The switch will turn on and off the USB and voltmeter to save battery.

The voltmeter is so I can monitor battery condition when I’m consuming power from the 12V outlet for a compressor, or Fridge (maybe in future).

Also I sleep sometimes in the bed so the USB will be nice to charge phones or tablets etc.

Some pics of tonight’s progress:

 

I should mention, none of this world be worthwhile without the cubby dust caps from @micwillia

Thanks for clean cubbies Man!!!!

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/bed-cubby-caps.491909/

 

Hell yeah, love me some electrical power stuff. I will take inspiration here for when I eventually get around to adding similar functionality. Keep up the great work (love your fire extinguisher mod, by the way).

 

Looks awesome!

 

You are going to come out from the store to find hippies squatting in the bed charging phones. lol

It does look really good and handy though.

 

Thank god I’ve got a locked canopy!

 

Done.

More work than I thought!

In the cubby I have three lighting relays for 3 exterior lighting circuits (rear bumper lights and two circuits on my Rhino Rack) and a fuse panel. On the front door I have a 12V outlet, a voltmeter, and 2 USB Ports. The switch turns on the USB ports and the voltmeter so they are not a battery drain. Positive 12V DC Power is from a 60 Amp breaker located in the engine compartment and run back to the Cubby with 6AWG fine-stranded welding cable. Frame DC negative is picked up off the frame just ahead of the cubby where there is OEM wiring landed. Switching is in the cab in the drivers side change cubby.

Not the most OCD tidy wiring job ever, but solid and serviceable. Won’t rattle loose or chafe, and all wires are heavy gauge and armoured where they need to be.

I used two drawer handles as guards to prevent shifting cargo from turning on the switch or smashing the voltmeter.





What’s inside:


From below (you can see the bolts that hold in the fibreglass back-plane from post #1 of this thread):

 

I like the cabinet handles for protection, very nice!

 

Solid job. 10/10, would copy. Can you elaborate on the switching in the cubby panel? Is this like an override for your whole system to disable from in the cab?

 

If guys are interested I will put more info in this thread in the next few days. The hardest part for me was finding a solid way to get the wires from the front of the truck to the back without drilling holes or having it be in danger of coming loose or chafing.

The lighting relays are in the bed cubby, but the switches for the lighting are in my dash cubby. I have a master breaker under the hood that turns he whole thing off, but there should be no power draw with what I have mounted as long as he switch running the meter and the USB is off.

The lighting will be subject of another thread, but basically I’ve got side wash lighting and a chase (dust) light mounted to my roof rack, as well as the rear facing lights that are in my RCI steel back bumper.

 

Looks great. Love that someone is using good standard simple & trusted wiring & components and not those stupid overpriced pod/relay junk things.
Very innovative use of draw handles.

 

Very nice! I'd love to see more as you post. I'll one day build an RFMR and something smaller for the rear.

 

Ok. It’s raining where I’m at, but I’ll crawl around my truck over the next couple days and snap some other pics. The route from front to back might be the most helpful. I didn’t find it obvious.

 

Thanks!

 

Crap. Another project to add to the list.

Well Done!

 

Great set up!
Is the 12 V future fridge outlet and usb and voltmeter all wired together? I was going to use ARB's wiring kit. 10 gauge. either tie them together or run two separate lines down. Any thoughts?

 

I actually have a separate circuit to the 12V outlet, but you could have them on the same circuit as long as you used the in-line fuse that comes with the little blue sea outlet combo to reduce the available current to the USB and Voltmeter to 2 or 3 amps. Essential you don’t want a defective voltmeter or USB port to be drawing 15 amps of fault current from a 20A fuse without blowing the fuse, and instead catching fire and burning your truck down.

What I did was buy the 12V outlet combo and USB from Blue Sea (find it on Amazon). I then replaced the 12V outlet in the Blue Sea outlet combo with a Voltmeter and fused the whole works (USB and Voltmeter) at 3 amps, with the 2A inline fuse still protecting the USB. The switch turns off both voltmeter and USB.

The 12V outlet I now had loose I mounted separately in the cubby door and fused it independently at 20 amps.

Photos should explain what I mean. vvvvv

$66 Below Deck Charging Panel - 2.1A Dual USB Charger & 12V Socket

https://www.amazon.ca/Below-Deck-Ch...ocphy=9001603&hvtargid=pla-524743292280&psc=1

 

Very helpful....I was going to use the 10 guage ARB wire harness with the included 15amp in line fuse for a dedicated ARB fridge outlet. To keep every thing separate i will run the exact same ARB wire harness and a Blue sea 3 panel similar to what you have with the switch. I was going to swap all connections to 10 gauge wiring since that is the ARB wiring harness gauge I also will go to the faster blue sea USB charger. Do you think this set up is ok and could I run a 15amp fuse or do I need to go with a smaller amp? Thanks for any advice...

https://www.quadratec.com/products/...M4BcTBvf2zOQ6RtN_Bk4-QuMpDoAadUoaApzoEALw_wcB

https://shop.pkys.com/Blue-Sea-Syst...RMIr3omF5JLcGDGHwd6Z9qnst9pl91iAaAhZhEALw_wcB

 

The USB double outlet should have its own 2A sub fuse, which I believe you will find it does with the blue sea panel (it will be part of the wiring loom on the back of the panel straight from Blue Sea).

10 gauge wire is really great for voltage drop and is more than enough for a 15 amp circuit. 14 gauge is the minimum gauge rating for 15 Amps and won’t make a lot of difference in short runs.

A word of caution:

While it is a good idea to “go big” on your wire gauge in 12V wiring, there are times when you are creating other problems by jamming too many huge wires onto one weak plastic terminal, or by stuffing areas full of inflexible wire. Do not feel guilty or that you are doing something wrong by reducing wire size in some areas to prevent chafing or gain yourself flexibility and working room. In other words, run your 15 Amp circuit in 10 gauge wire (good for 30 Amps) to give you minimal voltage drop and maximum current handling, but don’t hesitate to use some 14 gauge wire (good for 15 Amps) in the circuit if you need to make an umbilical connection or sneak through and opening. Hope this makes sense.

I’ve seen a lot of terrible installs where well meaning guys ran everything in awesome, huge 6 gauge wire, and it all fell apart on the trail due to the connection points not being rated for the weight and strain of the larger cable.

 

Great job!