gen2 shell wiring...

new owner of a low mile 2008 taco access cab trd offroad, to replace my trusty old Volvo 740 Turbo wagon as a utility vehicle for camping trips, general light weight hauling duty, and most important amateur astronomy.



first thing I did was score a clean used snugtop and got it on there friday night, still need to wire the lights. I want to install LED RGB light strips that can be set for dim red for when I'm doing astronomy, or bright amber or white for when I need light... I have a bunch of these that run on 12-14V just fine, with the umpteen button cheap remotes. I plan on wiring them to the existing switch in the shell door so they come on when you open the door, they remember the last color/brightness setting.

the truck isn't here tonight so I can't go look... is there unswitched power anywhere in the back of the truck I can pull a few amps off of ? or am I going to have to run my own power wire from up front somewhere?

and if I need to pull my own power wiring from up front, is there an accessory power block behind the dash? my older mercedes 300E has a power distribution block under the dash with a bunch of spare pins, one row is circuit 30 (always on), another row is circuit 15 (ignition), and yet another is 15R (accessory), and so forth. this is incredibly handy for connecting accessories like stereo gear etc. is there a good place under the hood to do this? Or, do y'all just tap your power right off the battery old school ?

if I need to run power wiring from the engine compartment back to the tail gate area, is there a preferred path, like along the inside/outside of a frame rail, or something? If I have to do this the hard way, I'll probably end up putting a 'powerpole' socket in the right side storage cubby, hah, and put the LED controller in there too.

does anyone ever put an aux battery on a tacoma, the way you do with bigger trucks + campers? I have a 20AH motorcycle battery I could wire to the trailer harness BATT wiring, so the car would charge it while running, but the motorcycle battery would run the DC power in the back when the car is off... hmmmm, giving myself ideas here.

 

ok, I removed the left tail light this evening to see how that looks inside. I think I'll run the power wire up to there, tap the brake light, and drill a hole in the black metal inner cover, install a panel jack, and plug my camper shell in there. that or a grommet and short harness with a inline connector.

 

I would love to hear what you come up with. I just picked up a Tacoma with a cap, and would like to runstrip lights. The idea of a dimmer switch sounds kind of awesome.

I started a thread over in the Lighting forum, but kind of wish I posted it here in this forum. https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...scent-dome-light-to-led-in-my-are-cap.425262/

I will subscribe for updates!

 

test drive of temporary setup with a single 1 meter extra-bright RGB strip (60 5050 LEDs) and the cheap remote controller. everything is velcroed to the shell liner, and its temporarily powered by a 12V battery I have handy.

ok, early twilight pic was *boring*

here's some after-dark pics...

first bunch are all 30s exposures at f/10 and iso400, thats approximately what it looks like when you're dark adapted.

dimmest red:


dimmest amber/orange:


dimmest white:


same, from farther back...


BRIGHT white. eek, almost too bright.


party mode!!

 

so... I had 15' of loom and 14 ga wire I was gonna run from the fuse box back to the left tail light assembly where I'd run it up to my camper shell, except going down out of the engine compartment, its pretty hard to dodge the suspension AND exhaust pipes and cats... plus 15' ain't long enough, hahahah, think I need 20'. ouch.

the factory harness appears to go through the cab. ouch. it comes out of the cab about midway under the doors, then follows the frame rails all the way back, but it sure doesn't look like it will be easy to add another wire and maintain weather integrity ? I haven't found any circuit in the back of the bed area that has unswitched power.

could someone who has a gen.2 with a shell that has a dome light try and follow their wiring and see where the dome light power is coming from and how its routed ?

 

My dealer ran the power for the dome light direct to the battery. Third brake light is harnessed, dome is a single wire.

 

how is that power wire routed from the battery to the bed ?

 

ok, I poked around a bit more at my access cab. the factory harnesses that come through the firewall left of the clutch pedal go down the driver side door sill, then under the drivers seat and then exit the bottom of the cab and head back to the bed and other rear end stuff (ABS sensors, differential harness, etc). near as I can tell, the only way I'll be able to use that routing would be to remove the drivers seat entirely so I can lift the carpet enough to get in there, and I'll still need to figure out how to get my wire through the existing weatherproof cable port without demolishing it. At least it looks fairly easy to get from the engine compartment into the cab, there's space next to the factory harness in the existing grommet.

I may end up just running down from the fuse box area past the suspension and exhaust manifold, but it sure looks like the power wire will have to be routed within inches of the catalytic converter, eek.

 

Down the driver side frame rails.

 

all the way from the engine compartment, so down the engine side of the wheel well?

 

I can upload a pic of where it goes down in a bit.

It is poorly done, but that's how they did it. Eventually I'll redo it.

 

Ok, I took about 20' of 14 gauge auto grade wire, wrapped it in 3/16" PET mesh sleeve (good to 250C), and threaded it from the fusebox down near where the brake lines drop, past that rubber flap behind the front wheel, and down the top of the frame rail, then tiewrapped the back half to the factory rear harness, and up into the left rear taillight compartment, I think that will do nicely. then it was dinner time, then it was too dark. This will take me a couple days to complete, as I want to make sure I do it well. I also got some 4-conductor 22 gauge hookup wire to go from the light strip to the RGB slide dimmer I found (which hasn't gotten here yet, so no rush).



in the fuse box, I used a 'add-a-circuit' low profile mini-fuse tap.



you have to plug this in so the left pin (in the picture) goes to the 'powered' side of the fuse, and the right pin goes to the 'load' side of the fuse. you put the original fuse in the lower slot on it, and your new fuse in the top one, which powers the pigtail.

Originally I'd intended to plug the tap into the Horn fuse slot, but the wire would have run into the side of the fusebox cover, so that was no good. then I was going to use the 'Radio #2' fuse, but the wire ran into a tall square fuse next to it. oooh, found an unused fuse slot that had unswitched power but no output jack, so I've plugged the tap in there, works great. I made a notch in the partition that seperates the fuse/relays from the 'postivve terminal' and cable harness connectors, and ran the wire through that notch, and out the space next to all the other cables.

I used 14 ga wire because I'll probably add some other always-powered accessories to the back of the car, like maybe a tire compressor, and maybe a dual cigar jack w/ usb chargers and stuff (I'll put all that stuff on a switch so it doesn't drain the battery when its not in use), 14 gauge should easily handle 10 amps or more.

sorry, no pics of me on a slider under the truck mumbling and grunting while I'm working out the wire route. and the routed wire is nearly invisible.

 

version 2 with the slider switches testing on the kitchen table...



thats fairly dim red (it can be set even dimmer). its drawing 90mA (less than 1/10 amp), and I measured it at about 640 Hz.

idle current with all three sliders on 'off' is about 10-15mA.

 

correction, all off, its drawing 25mA, 0.025 amps. dim red is as low as 35mA, and is much dimmer than the push button digital controller I was using before.

 

so. I've run a 14 gauge 12V wire always on back to the left rear of the bed. I'm going to use this to power my LED lights, and also a cigar/etc plug for charging or whatever which I'll put in the side cubby. thinking I should use some sort of positive terminal to wire all this stuff to instead of just splicing it... whatchall think? Powerpole seems like overkill here...

maybe I should terminate my main power line and a ground in a plastic ABS weatherbox using ring terminals and...



and wire my crap to that...

 

triple dimmer fits in a box!



now its down to one last trip to the store to get some middle gauge red & black wire (18 ga?), plus a smaller weather box and terminals like those above, where I can terminate my power wire just forward of the left taillight assembly, and behind the storage box on that side, and then I can hook everything up.

oh yeah, still need to find the chassis ground thats somewhere near the differential, and add my master ground wire there for said power box.

guess its ground "BD" here on page 18...
http://www.customtacos.com/tech.old...toypdf/ewd/2006/tacoma/g/em01d0up.pdf#page=18

 

ok, 2 more trips to the HW toy store... I needed smaller tiewraps to secure the wire to the inside of the shell, and I managed to loose those 4 corner screws for the dimmer cover box, so I had to get some panhead #6 x 1/2 sheet metal screws.

but finally, ITS INSTALLED, yay!

 

When you say the fuse tap has to be inserted in a particular orientation, how do you tell, with a multi meter or some othernway?

 

I verified the 'power' pin of the fuse socket with a multimeter, yeah. the side of the tap that the wire comes out of is its 'output' or 'load' side, so the tap's pin on the far side is its 'input' or 'power' side.

I actually ended up putting it in a fuse position in the middle of the fuse box that had NO existing fuse, but had a power input contact (as seen by visual inspection). I guess I should take a picture, eh? ok.

k, see the missing fuse in the middle row that has a green, blue, green fuse?



note the copper colored socket on the one side? thats the power side to that row of fuses... so thats where I installed my minifuse tap, with its output wire on the opposite side. since I didn't have to remove a fuse to do this, I only installed one (5A) fuse on the tap in the upper position.

 

no mods to my relays that I know of, but I wouldn't mind the fog anytime thing, is there a link for that?