electrical help for a novice

Hey there TW so I am by no means a mechanic but I do all my own stuff and I'm having trouble with electrical. I recently installed 2 led lights, 2 4inX4in pods in the fog location and also a 22in light bar mounted to my bull bar. Now both of these I have run directly to the battery which I'm not really fond of but that's another thing entirely my 2 main issues are I am now in the process of installing a cb. Now to power this I really don't want to run it off the battery so I got an add a circuit and I was thinking of running it to an interior fuse panel and ground it where ever will this work?? Next the I'm seeing people build an AUX fuse panel is this for more electric stuff that dosn't have to be ran straight off the battery?

 

You can install an Add-a-Fuse in any circuit with a low enough existing load to support the new accessory, for a CB radio, this isn't difficult; any non-critical circuit switched by ACC should suffice (ACC, power windows, etc.). The reason people build an auxiliary fuse/relay box is because you don't have to modify any factory circuits or wiring, it looks much cleaner, and you can attach more devices using this method. These aux fuse boxes almost always source energy from the battery as this is the best location to source any power with a significant amount of electrical current. These accessories are always switched on or off via a physical switch or relay. Most of the time relays are controlled with a physical switch in the cab and can only engage when a certain condition is met such as the key being turned to the ACC or IGN position.

It's mostly useless to say that certain devices are run "straight off the battery" as anything using electricity on the vehicle runs "straight off the battery". From what I'm gathering, you're concerned with whether the devices you're trying to run will require their own fused circuit due to current draw concerns or if it is acceptable to source power from certain existing circuits on the vehicle.

 

Thanks a bunch bud that really helps out a lot so ya I'm gonna run it off a fuse like that so it'll only turn on with the key on also I might have to start building an AUX panel cause I'm planning a lot more stuff requiring power

 

No problem. There is a stickied post in the Technical Chat forum about building and mounting aux fuse/relay blocks. For more information you should be able to find plenty of info about aux fuse blocks in other threads just by searching (don't use the TW search, it sucks. Type your search into Google and put in site:tacomaworld.com at the end).