Help Wiring CH4x4 Fog Light switch to Existing Foglight Wires (2013 Tacoma)

Okay. So in trying to digest these responses in the best way that I can (and thank you to the both of you for weighing in, btw), it sounds like the misconception that I have been going with is just that the after market switch I have is designed to do slightly more than the factory switch. I guess just the mere reality that the after market switch has different lighting effects for when it's turned on and off is evidence enough of that. Still though, I figured that there must be some electrical gate inside of the thing that managed to make all of that work.

So I had my car entirely taken apart for the past 2 days and of course this meant I couldn't drive it anywhere (in fact I even happened to kill the battery because I was messing with it for SO long yesterday, but jumped it this afternoon). I finally had to put everything back together so that I could use my truck again. I'm still planning to do a write-up of that just for anyone who might find it useful since I DID manage to install a few gauges that I've been wanting to install for months now.

But anyway, I followed the wiring diagram that was left by caribe makaira several posts above. This DOES allow my fog lights to turn on when I press the button, but unfortunately none of the illumination works. It's too bad because I've lit the switch up (both parts of it) and they look beautiful. I'm attempting to turn the entire interior of my truck a soft blue color and these buttons will really look amazing whenever they finally work.

So based on what Voltron4x4 was explaining above, it sounds like I will need to purchase an additional relay in order to make the switch function the way it's fully supposed to. Presumably the standard wiring will turn the fog lights on and off (which is its purpose), but then the relay plugged into a fuse will allow me to gain the lighting effects from it that I am going for.

I've also been reading that there is a different way to tap into lighting if you want the dimmer switch to actually dim the after market switches too. I wish I understood this stuff a little better because it's actually a lot of fun - and I'm slowly, but surely getting there, but for the time being I'm just going to have to leave it as is. Unfortunately I'm about to be traveling for several weeks and so I won't get to "open'er back up" until I get back, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to purchase the proper relays and hook up the switch accordingly. The thing is that I actually purchased 6 different switches. 4 of them are for aftermarket lights that I'm putting on the truck and 2 of them were just to have a consistent look and feel (especially with the soft blue backlighting) and are intended to replace the Fog Lights and the VSC. I did NOT swap out the VSC switch on this go-around since I figured that I would run into the same problems I had with the new Fog Light switch and I didn't want to potentially break the function from working properly since I haven't time right now to really get it right.

So here is what the new panel of switches looks like (again, the VSC is just that icon with the car on it, but I have a switch that's in the exact same style as the other ones I had custom made at CH4x4). Again, NONE of the switches light up right now and ONLY the Fog Light one actually performs some kind of action (in this case turning the fog lights on and off when the headlights are on). I put the others in just so they're in their places and hopefully will figure out soon how to make them function properly with back-lighting. Incidentally, I did install a new Bull Guard (https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...h-led-strip-2013-tacoma.622362/#post-21236298), but I haven't yet wired the LED lights that are on the front of it. As you can see the middle switch on the top panel is meant to work with that.



All of this really started because I was wanting to install a Voltmeter / Ammeter alongside of a dual USB charger (with built-in voltmeter). I was shocked at how many panels needed to come out in order to gain access to that, but ramonortiz55 did what is truly THE most amazing write up ever on how to remove everything. I followed his post to the letter and it really made things so easy. Here is his post on removing all of the panels in order to install something where the cigarette lighters / powerpoints used to be (https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...enter-console-clean-look-lots-of-pics.306779/). So if you're curious, here is how that part of the project turned out (and it works really well thanks to a few other folks on this site who helped me to figure out how it should be wired based.



Unfortunately the voltmeter / ammeter (one on the left) is a little hard to see in the sunlight. I have to give far more credit to the one on the right and if I can find a voltmeter / ammeter using their digital LED style then I will even replace the Ammeter that I have so it's easier to read in the sunlight. Here are a few more pics of that one in different lighting conditions (and in various states of completion - so some of the panels may have still been off).





And finally, here is what the switch CAN look like when fully illuminated (this was done apparently by wiring it improperly, but ultimately sending voltage to the proper component on the switch itself). It'll look super cool when the entire panel is lit up like that and they all serve their purpose.

 

Unfortunately, no, I did not. And I had to finally put everything back together. It's a little unfortunate how much of the car you have to dismantle in order to get to the wiring. I would love to continue tinkering with it, but it's put my truck out of service in the interim and as I have some upcoming traveling and therefore a lot of little errands to run, I just couldn't be without the truck another day.

It sounds from some of the other users above that these after market switches will NOT work in the full way that they're intended to without having an additional relay installed and connected to the fuse box. It sounds like they're intended to work differently from the factory switches. The factory switches just have a single light inside of them which is turned on when the headlights are turned on, but there is no variance in how it looks whether the switch is clicked on or off. So that seems to make a big difference w/r/t how these after-market switches are intended to work and that they can't just be wired up to the existing wires that were connected to the factory switch (at least not if you expect the switch to function in all of the ways that it is capable of functioning).

 

There's no diode to prevent flow direction, why would it matter? Are you saying the internal lights in the switch need a power flow direction?

 

No, I think it has to do with the power feed vs the ground connection. Power can feed the switch and the light, but a ground wire from the relay coil can't feed a light.

 

Can't or doesn't?

 

Can't. I looked into this a little bit a long time ago, so things are a bit fuzzy.

 

If you hook a meter, you get 12v DC (+) on the blue wire. And I don't know of a relay coil that would "restrict" amps to an itty bitty switch lamp...but I don't have a CH switch to verify.

 

Based on how the CH4X4 switch works, I am speculating that this is how it's wired inside. You will see that when the OEM relay coil supplies a voltage, looking for a ground connection, all kinds of weird feeds happen through the lights. This is all just speculation though.

 

Found this in the Forum..

 

That pic confirms what I speculated about how it's wired inside the switch. The only additional thing is that there's a current limiting resistor for each LED. In that pic, they cut the power feed trace. I can't imagine what that accomplishes. I'm sure it is possible to cut traces and solder jumpers in to get it to function with OEM wiring, but I think you will still need a 5th wire for the indicator LED.

 

This is how CH4X4 intended it to be wired.

 

SO I say, don't use the illumination ground (green with white tracer) and ground to chassis. And don't use the RED 1, cap it.

 

OK, I did it! The blue lines are where you cut traces. The green lines are where you solder in jumpers. Do not cut the trace that is shown cut on the circuit board. You must add a 5th wire into the connector and connect it to the relay contact output that is also going to the controlled lights.

 

No soldering or removing traces...just use the relay output and illumination (+) to chassis ground.

 

For others who want to duplicate connector use without cutting OEM harness.

 

That might work, but I think you're going to need to reduce the value of the current limiting resistor. You have the relay coil, current limiting resistor and LED all wired in series.

 

Holy crap you guys are pretty amazing with this stuff. I am embarrassed to always be so amazed at this, but I just am not yet at the point where I can come up with this kind of circuitry work on my own.

So with that, and given that it sounds like a 5th wire might be necessary to make the thing work as fully intended, but knowing that I only have FOUR wires coming out of the CH4x4 device, what do I do? Does one of them need to be paired with two wires? And if so, where are these supposed to come from?

Finally, I have read a few other threads on TW whereby people are talking about tapping into the dimmer so that any illuminated switches/gauges will actually dim according to the internal dimmer setting. I took apart the dash and so I saw where the dimmer set of wires plugged into, but is this something that can easily be done? Would I just literally strip two specific wires on that harness and then run wires off of them connecting to other switches that need illumination or is that the entirely wrong way to go about this?

Basically I'm hoping that someone might be able to draw up a simple schematic kind of like Muddinfun did up above or even that caribe makaira drew up on the previous page that would illustrate where I would need to attach each of the 4 wires coming off of the CH4x4 switch that would accomplish the following:

a) Illuminate the "Fog Lights" text when the lights are turned on
b) Actually turn on the fog lights when pressed on
c) Illuminate the fog light icon on the button when pressed on (presumably the "fog lights" text would stay illuminated in this mode too)
d) Bonus: actually dim according to the dim setting I have set on the dimmer wheel

That's how the button would ideally work, but again I realize that this might be easier stated than implemented. Still though, I'd sure love to try it out

And if I can get that one to work, then I'm hoping I'll be able to figure out the other 5 that I still have to do behind this one (granted most of those will just be external lights; the only other one being the VSC button which has a different set of colored wires on the harness so I'm guessing it might work a little differently still - albeit perhaps similar to this fog light problem)

 

Wow. That is an amazing diagram caribe makaira. Thanks so much for doing that! So I'm going to have to digest it just a little bit. Let me see if I've got the pieces.

The adding of the fuse is pretty straightforward. It might just be that I don't know how to read these diagrams, but I can't tell if you're suggesting that I use a 5 or 10 amp fuse since both are in there, but either way, that part should be pretty straightforward. And then the ground is obvious very easy too. And on that, I'm guessing that I can just ground it to the chassis unless there is some specific reason that I need to use a different ground?

So it's the middle pieces that are a little more confusing.

The Illumination (+) should just connect to the green wire that I have coming out of the truck right now. It's been made pretty clear that is used for illuminating the switches when the lights are engaged. But it's the second part here that's got me a bit more stuck. So the second red/yellow line connects to a relay. Does this mean that I will have to purchase this relay as well and then connect the remaining wires already hooked up to the fog lights through that?

I guess where I'm getting lost is that I've already got FOUR wires that are connected to various things inside of my truck. They were previously connected to the factory fog light switch, but I've cut them and so now they're just 4 loose wires. At least two of those wires make a circuit of some kind actually allowing me to physically turn the fog lights on when I press the button on. So I'm trying to figure out if the bottom part of your diagram is showing what is happening if I were to trace some of those existing wires, or if those are also components that I would have to install?

 

I've only got a quick minute, but here's the basics. My way will definitely work. Caribe's way in post 34 might work. His way is comparable to this. If you drink a 6 pack by yourself, you can catch a pretty good buzz. If 2 of your friends join you, each person is not going to get much of a buzz. Now, if 1 of the 3 says, I'm only going to take a few sips(decreasing the value of the resistor), then the other 2 people can still start feeling pretty good.

Post 38 is basically rewiring the whole fog light circuit in the way CH4X4 intended their switch to be used.