I’m bad at wiring. For camper 3rd brake light.

What/how would you guys wire this into the brake light? This is what I got and the adapter I got from oriellys. Can I use this stuff? Should I get something else?

 

Take a look at your wiring schematic. It will have the wire colour leading to the brake light, or look at the two wires leading to the brake light in the top picture you included. You'll need to splice the 3rd brake light red wire into that wire. Don't splice into the running light. Youll need a wiring diagram or jumpers to know which is which. If you have a 4 pin trailer lighting harness, you can splice into that as well. White will be a ground wire on the 3rd brakelight wiring. Splice this into your ground wire. ( white and black in your top pick).

 

This isn't quite plug and play for you, but it's not too involved.

The turn signal is the top light, and the brake/running light is on the bottom, so we'll look closely at the wires going to the brake light at the bottom.

I put a meter to the wiring loom at the center rear of the bed (in this post https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...rake-and-running-lights.720093/#post-25653050 ). This loom is probably the same one that plugs into your tail light assembly from the left hand side of your photo.

What I found was:

the ground wire is white with black stripe.
the brake wire is green with white stripe.

Looking at all of the wires on your tail light, I see the white with black stripe. I also see some green wires. Does one of them have a white stripe? If not, can you find the green wire with white stripe on the loom side of the plug?

You can splice in your two wire plug either near the light, or on the other side of the plug at the wiring loom (remove a little of the plastic wiring loom guard to make room). You'll can either use crimp connectors or solder+elec tape.

If you look at the plug in your new light's wiring, you'll notice that on the "light" side of the plug, the wires are red and black. I could guess, but check the instructions for your light to be certain which wire is ground and which wire is "hot". After they go through the plug, the red and black wires are then red and white. Cut the red and white wires (at about the middle, leaving the other half of the plug for a future project) and connect whichever is the brake light wire (red or white) to green with white stripe on your truck, and whichever is ground (red or white) to white with black stripe on your truck.

FWIW, I prefer solder wire connections, but if you don't trust your ability to do this (or don't have a soldering gun), then a crimp connector should be just fine.

Post pick of finished product when you are done!

 

That harness is designed to plug into a trailer plug. Which you may or may not have.
If you don't, you'll need to cut & splice or buy a new plug &splice to the oe wiring. DO NOT use a quick splice. If you do you'll end up sad.

Quick splice:

Og wiring to aftermarket brake light harness:


Green/white >>> red

White/black >>>white

If you tap into the green/red wire, the 3rd party brake light will always be illuminated. The green/white will illuminate only while the brake switch is engaged.

 

Now that you mentioned trailer plug, I just remembered that I do have this. Should this work? One way to find out I guess

 

> Should this work?

Not directly. You could tap into it using any number of "adapters", or splice into the wires on the back side of the plug. That'd be a fine option if it would be a more convenient place as far as running the wires.

Note that if you get or make an adapter so you can plug into your newly found trailer plug, then you won't have it available to plug in a trailer!

Added in edit: If you know of an old guy that seems to be pretty handy with, well, anything, he'd make easy work of this project and probably be happy to show you how it works.

 

Yup didn’t work. I guess I’m confused on what you guys mean by “tap into”. What does that look like? I know how to do this (see pic) Is this what we’re talking about? The brake light wires have no additional ends to splice. I’m confused haha sorry guys. I appreciate the help.

 

Ok quick YouTube video explained how to “tap into” now I get it better

 

@Puppypunter make a brake T for first gens once. He might be willing to do a few more down the road. I might be willing to do it as well if he tips me off on the connector and pinout.

 

My brake light has a green, green red stripe, white black stripe. No green/white like you mention.
Thinking I might try red to solid green, white to white black stripe?

 

Just did this. Didn’t work. I’ll keep playing with it

 

If you still have it connected like that, turn on your running lights and see if your brake light comes on!

Based on what I found when I probed the wires in the loom, I would guess that the solid green is your running lights, which would turn your 3rd brake light on when you turn on your running/parking lights. Not good.

That leaves the green with red stripe. Given that that's the only other wire running into the back of the brake light bulb socket (the white/black wire (ground) is connected to the metal socket itself), I'd put all of my chips on green with red stripe.

 

Striped wire is the brake light, solid color is the running light. White/black is the neg/ground.

 

For what it's worth, the work you've done so far looks pretty good. Once you get the wiring tested out correctly, try to wrap those copper strands around each other good and tight. Heat up with soldering iron and touch a bit of solder to it and let it pull into the joint and you're good to go. Lastly, don't skimp on electrical tape. Cheap tape loosens up quickly. Use good tape, pull it pretty tight with just a bit of stretch even, and it'll hold up good. I often put a small zip-tie on the last turn of tape as insurance against it ever working loose.

 

So I tried red wire to green red striped wire and that didn’t work either. White remained with white black stripe wire. Didn’t work either. I’ll be back at it again tomorrow.

 

I recently did this, you can use a circuit tester (they’re very cheap and can help you in the future also). You ground the clamp side of the circuit tester and poke the pointy part into the wires while someone presses your brakes, the light in it will turn on and that means you found your wire (for me it was the green/white striped wire for the brake lights). Then just tap in.

 

This might help…

 

I’m buying one tomorrow. For me the only green/white stripped wire I can see is before the truck adapter plug. See pic. Should I be tapping into that? Before the plug?

 

Oh this is gold. Thank you sir.

 

You can follow/trace the green/white striped wire through the plug. Id do it after the plug on the taillight wiring side how you have it.