Roof Light Wiring

Recently bought a Carr Roof Light bar for my truck. The install for that is the easy part. My questions is, does anyone have any good ideas for wiring the lights coming off the top of the cab. I thought about drilling four separate hole for the lights. If anyone has any better ideas, please let me know. Thanks.

 

How are you planning to wire the lights? i.e. all four to one switch or some other variation.

i don't see the need to put 4 holes in the roof, maybe one if you really have to.

 

have you had your windshield replaced recently?

 

Most of those roof light bars have brackets made for them that attach to the channels on the sides of the windshield. I wouldn't recommend drilling holes into your roof...

 

If you have a rain gutter on the inside of door frame, you could drill a hole in that, feed the wires through, run down the weather stripping down to where the fender meets hood, into your engine bay, then into the can through the firewall grommet. I did this for my light bar wiring.

 

It's a Carr light bar with the gutter less mounting brackets. I plan on wiring all four lights into one switch. I ordered the KC double wiring kit to be able to do that. I'll take a look to see how it's all gonna fit together and post pictures. Don't feel very comfortable drilling four holes so hopefully one off to the side will work.

 

Right I know what bar yer talking about. But you should still be able to route the wires a similar way like I did with the led bar. If the wires are skinny enough, you may just be able to run them down the weather stripping on top. I'm not sure if the 2nd gens have a rain gutter like 1st gens or not. I assume they do. But a hole in there could easily be do-able. It's outside the cab so it shouldn't leak water. Just seal it up with something if you want anyways. Idk I'd have to see pics to elaborate further with your setup. But yer right, last thing you wanna do is drill holes into the cab.

 

The fantastic part about 2nd gens is there is a nice fat channel that runs right down the side of the windshield on either side. My recommendation is consolidate all your wires to a single skinny loom and run them down this channel. If you search around on the forum for LED bar installs and how people have run their wires (same way I ran my wires) you should find some pictures of what I'm talking about.

You will basically just run your wires to the start of the windshield channel where it meets the roof, then tuck the wires into the channel nice and snug like, run them all the way down this channel until you meet the plastic trim piece against the windshield, run the wires under that and now you are in the engine bay.

That way no drilling, no holes, no chance of leaks, and you are left with a clean install.

 

this is not true... early 2nd gen tacomas didn't have that type of channel seal. not sure which year toyota switched. i ran into this issue when i had my windshield replaced recently. the windshield guy had to double check that he had the right seal.

 

Interesting. So no side channel in the windshield of earlier 2nd gens? Bummer cause it makes routing wires easy as hell.

 

Yep, my '06 does not have this channel. I'm going to have to figure this out.

Looks like I can run some wire next to the windshield??

 

Would you mind posting a picture of how you routed your wires? I would also like to know what kind of wire loom/sleeve you used, as well. Thanks.

 

Took some quick pictures:





I didn't use any wire loom or anything, the wire already has an extremely thick jacket on it, but I've seen pics of people use the woven style loom. As the wire enters under the plastic cowl piece it goes right into the engine bay.

 

Thank you. That is perfect fit and looks very clean. Unfortunately my Rigid Industries wiring harness is a little different and will require a wire loom of some kind.

 

This is what I did on mine for the side lights on my roof rack

 

Hmmm, I've used one of their harnesses before. Does it have the thick PVC jacket on it? One option could be to remove that if it is that way and get some heat shrink to replace it so it's not as bulky. Then if you want add some low profile woven loom for extra protection.

Basically just removing the portion of jacket on the wires running up to the light bar and leaving the rest.

At least that's what I'd do. I was lucky enough to have a LED bar with a 3-4ft strand of wiring to work with.

If the Rigid harness could fit in the gap you could just use some dabs of silicone sealant to hold it in place too maybe.

 

Yes, it does come with the PVC jacket on it. I will be cutting the two wires out of the jacket and placing it in a braided loom of some sort. I'm mainly concerned about UV damage and rotting.

With the two wires and a braided loom, I hope it will look as seamless as yours. What kind of silicone sealant did you use?