Dual Switch wiring help ch4x4

Red wire is where the switches get power. Blue/green is where the switches supply power to the LB. from there it goes to gnd through the LB black wire but these switches have to use relays or they fry since they’re only good to pass a few amps.
Red wire - Fused 12V+ in to switch(this allows the switch to activate a relay but does not provide the current to the light bar).
Blue wire - out to coil positive (LB #1)
Green wire - out to coil positive (LB #2)
Black switch wire - gnd for switch leds only, it does not provide gnd connection for anything else.
To connect the LB’s to the relays each relay has 4 connections:
Blue or green to coil positive.
Coil negative to ground(battery - or chassis)
12V source(fused for light bar current and wires)
12V output to light bar positive.
Each light bar has 2 connections:
12V supplied by relay output
Ground to battery - or chassis.
The switch they come with are simple and rugged but not cool and don’t fit the stock switch locations. The CH4x4 switches for tacos must use relays which complicates the wiring and is further complicated by the led illumination.

 

The dash Illumination circuit is on with the headlights and is dimmed on the ground side so if you want consist operation across all switches you need to cut the trace between the red and yellow wire pins to separate the led illumination from switch power and then connect the yellow wire to dash illumination positive and the black wire to dash illumination negative rather than ground. This will allow for the switches to operate when they have power but illuminate only when switched on or with headlights on and have dimming with your other switches.
Edit- before anybody goes ballistic on “wtf” notions they probably made the circuit board this way so that switch power could be supplied either through the red wire leaving the switches hot when the red wire was hot or when the yellow was hot and assumes only one is used rather than both with the trace cut. Anyway you slice it you can have your cake and eat it too but you need to learn to cook.

 

They are fairly responsive to me but only by email. They Won't return a call. Will, the tech support guy, keeps telling me to hire a qualifies installer. It shouldn't be this hard. Not my first rodeo, but first for a dual switch.

 

Yes, sorry. White LB on top of amber LB, both with fused relays running into cab.

 

Yea… I’ve installed 6 other switches from them just fine. I tried like every combination of wires for this dual switch too.. I’m just living with the permanent illumination at this point

 

Ah, I was thinking of it differently! This is the wiring harness that came w/ each LB,

$15 Wiring Harness 1 Lead, AKD Part LED Light Bar Nylon Wiring Harness Kit 12V 40A Relay Fuse Rock Switch for Offroad Driving Light Pods Lights Work Lights for Trucks ATV UTV SUV Pickup Boat

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08C3143YT . Yes, they are cheapie AKD lightbars behind the lower grill.

The relay is set up correctly under the hood. Three wires (white/blue/black) are coming off the relay, thru the firewall, then to the dual switch. I was thinking that all three of the switch wires had to be wired to the dual switch! I guess it would be the white wire from the relay would be going to the blue or green wires. What would I do w/ the black and blue wires from the relay? Just cap them off? Kind of a shame that two might not be used as there were two, thick-ass bundles sucking up all the real estate in the firewall grommet.

So to confirm for the dual switch:
Black - ground to chassis NOT to relay black.
Blue / Green - to relay white.
Red - Fuse box to constant 12V
Yellow - Fuse box (panel fuse)

Do I have this right yet?

 

The harness is prewired and some of the connections are not shown in their schematic but taking this with a grain of salt I’m pretty sure that:
The light bar ground is connected to the coil ground and the switch led ground(3rd wire from switch) at the relay(under the wrap) before going back to battery-. So in this case with this harness if you want the switch leds to illuminate you CAN connect your CH4x4 black wire to the harness black wire, you just won’t have dimming. If you don’t want the switch leds to illuminate you can leave the black CH4x4 wire unconnected. To have the leds dim with the rest of your switches you would need to either use a different ground wire from the 3 in the switch part of the harness or clip theirs at the relay, pull it out of the wire sleeve, and connect it to the dash dimmer ground. Either 12V+ supply will work on with dimming.
Switch power is connected to the 12v+ fused relay supply also at the relay and under wrap so it’s hard to say what’s what without peeking under the wrap. I’d suggest you do this to avoid shorting anything out. You ABSOLUTELY need to know which of those 3 switch wires comes from the 12V+ supply, which connects to the relay coil positive, and which is the switch led ground.
Red and yellow on the new switch are both connected on the board so basically redundant.

 

Thank you for your guidance! I want the switch to work as advertised...in my case orange when headlights on and white when LB is on. I just heard back from the Amazon seller and the say the harness switch is wired as follows:
White - Positive In (Power)
Blue - Positive Out (When switch is on, sends signal/power to Relay to switch on)
Black - Negative (Ground for Red LED on switch)

 

Ok, that covers the switch power and triggering the relay.
White to Red, Blue to Blue or Green. like I said before, the dash illumination circuit is dimmed on the ground side and also comes on with the headlights but since Red and Yellow are connected on the board (see the pic in post #17) you only need to use one of them to both power the switch and illuminate it.
An always hot source will have the switch always powered and the leds always on( probably don’t want this).
An ignition hot source will power the switch and illuminate it whenever the engine is on.
Using the dash illumination hot as source will power the switch and illuminate it with the headlights on.
For no dimming just connect the Black switch wire to the Black harness wire.
As I said before dimming adds a little more complexity but mostly because it’s weird and not because it’s hard to do. I can explain that too if you want. It’s worthy of its own post.

 

For anyone else that wants to wire these the “right” way, that is, with switch power independent of led illumination power this is how to do it.
Open up the switch, it has some locking tabs that hold one side of the switch body on, gently pry it open and pull out the circuit board.
One side of the board has the switches, leds, and pins and the other has nothing but traces(circuit paths) and 2-752(7500 ohm) smd resistors. Changing the value of these can bring them into alignment with your other switches in terms of brightness.
Compare the two sides of the board and you can see that the pins that connect to the red and yellow wires have a trace connecting them.
Cut a section out across this trace with a Dremel or exacto knife isolating the pins from each other and reassemble the switch body.

Now you can connect the red wire to a 12v+ source(your choice whether ignition hot or always hot).
Connect the yellow wire to dash light positive and the black wire to dash light negative and your leds will both dim with the rest of your dash lights and come on with them when you turn on the headlights. Dash +/- are at every switch that dims as well as the main instrument display. The colors vary by year. My 2nd gen is green(to yellow) and green/white(to black).
There are a few threads on this topic alone, here’s one for 2nd gens. https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/tapping-dash-lights.523073/

 

Thanks for the continued support! This is what I tried Day 1; LB 1 & 2 white to red, LB 1 blue to blue (& LB 2 blue to green), and LB 1 and 2 black to black. Yellow was not connected. From looking at my notes a few days later, what I observed was the White LB (1) was always on. Only way to turn it off was to disconnect the harness from the new switch. The White LB switch never lit up and the Amber LB (2) switch worked correctly. If you want I can check again or am I missing something? I think my notes are accurate, tho.

 

So you’re saying the white light bar never turns off but the amber light bar worked correctly? This is either a stuck relay or a bad switch. To determine which try using the amber light bar relay in the white light bar harness.
The way the switches are supposed to change color when on/off leads me to think they are not on/off but on/on where one position powers one led only from one source and the other position powers a different led and the light bar from the other source. Basically a dpdt switch with 2 inputs and 2 outputs. As shipped the 2 inputs are connected by the trace I mentioned above. If the switch is stuck in the second position it can’t change color and the light bar stays on, this is most likely the case. Having opened up numerous of these switch bodies I can tell you the actual switches inside are a bit iffy though some are obviously better made than others. Still, both the physical switch inside and the mechanics of the button actuating it can be off by a tiny amount. In other words “bad switch”. My own curiousity took me down that rabbit hole and I found that some can be fixed and others cannot, most(99.9% maybe) probably wouldn’t bother but I hate seeing fixable things get thrown away so I try and salvage things that are only mostly dead vs all the way dead.

 

Yep - based on my notes the yellow seemed to work and I recall the white not going off unless I disconnected the new switch. Both LBs worked repeatedly w/ their own switches. I wonder if a relay got stuck due to something I did. Is there any way I can undo what I did or force the White LB relay to trigger? Reason I ask is I'd have to take the whole bumper cover off again to swap the harnesses and that would be a major PITA that I just don't have time for now.

 

You should be able to change relays, they just plug in to a socket. If they’re not sealed the can allow moisture inside and if that happens they will corrode. Corrosion can cause them to stick either closed or open. One of the reasons I chose to use a Bussman fuse/relay panel is that it uses sealed relays and the box itself has seals on every terminal. You can also get individual relays and connectors called skirted relays that help even if the relay itself is as completely sealed.

 

Ok back from vacation and had some time to swap the relays. Looks like it's the White LB part of the switch that is faulty. Take a look at my spreadsheet showing all the troubleshooting I did this weekend. I hope it all makes sense!

 

Smoking gun. That looks pretty convincingly like a bad switch. If you’re a cheap bastard like me and like to poke inside things you could pop it open and see if there’s a mechanical reason for it or just contact them for a replacement. I had a single switch version that didn’t work because there was just a bit too much play and the pcb was shifting in the switch housing. I frequently open them up anyway to change the resistor values so it wasn’t a big deal(I find that as shipped they are rarely the same brightness as stock switches).

 

Thanks, Scott! I really appreciate your assistance here. I'm going to call them and see what they'll do for me. I'm really hoping for a new switch and no baloney from them. If they fail to help me out I'll be popping it open. Either way, I'll share an update.

 

Just called them and sent them an email. Waiting for a returned response, I finally found this is the info on their website, under Policies:

Warranty:
We offer 1-YEAR WARRANTY from the purchase date. All products supplied by us MUST be installed by a fully qualified mechanic, proof of installation by the above mentioned will be required.
Product found to be defective or faulty by us will be replaced free of charge. Please provide purchase invoice, installation proof and all details of the said failure.​

There's no way they are going to send a replacement w/o install proof from a mechanic. Unless I can get a mechanic to look at it, for their hourly rate of $100+, and send a report I guess I am S.O.L. I might be ripping that thing apart by the end of the week!

 

Be polite but push a little. It’s a defective part not a bad install.

 

More unanswered phone calls and unreturned calls and emails. Getting ready to pry this thing open and take a look around. Can't say I recommend CH4x4 moving forward.