Lights on a bed rack wiring?

Hi all,

I’m planning on adding rock lights designed to fit in the holes at the feet of the bed rack. Based on the picture, where should the wires go on each side? Do y’all typically just run them straight down behind the cab between the bed and then zip tie it to places underneath the cab and then into the engine bay?

 

I think this really depends on a couple of factors, like what are you going to use as your trigger/switch. If you just plan on using them with a switch in your bed under your tonneau cover, I would run a pos and neg from the engine bay to the bed. From there I would add in the switch and a fused distribution block. No sense in running the wires for each individual light up to the engine bay.

Also, while you're at it. I would think about if you're going to plan on adding any other power hungry devices (fridge, inverter) later on down the road and put in the proper wire size the first time. Lots of options and things to think about. Nice rig!

 

Thank you very much for the info! I do have a trigger system that I could run from the engine > underneath the cab > up between the bed and cab. I’m just wondering as well how do people hide their wiring when doing something like this? I’ll probably run 2 sets of wiring now that I think about it from the Trigger to the bed so that I can independently turn on driver or passenger side when we’re out camping

 

Is it common to have wiring exposed as this is how I’m picturing it in my head. The leads from the bay will slither between the bed and the cab and you’ll see the wiring laying there on top of the bed cover when connected.

 

Yup, so under the cab you would just follow the factory wire loom on the passenger side.
For the wires in the rack, I would get creative with zip ties and and tuck it into the rack as best as possible. Wrap it in loom to keep it together and out of sight as much as possible.
For the run between the rack and the bed, you can either drop it down as you have shown, or pinch them between your tonneau cover and bed running them through the bed and then pop them out of the plastic grommet on the bottom passenger side. In the gap between the bed and the cab, there is a channel on the outside of the bed that runs from the driver side to passenger side if you need to snake wires from one side to the other. If it were me, I would pinch the wires between the tonneau and the bed and get all my wiring squared away inside the bed. You could zip tie the wires from the driver side lights to the tonneau canister and could probably use some vhb tape to mount the distribution block to the canister too.

Just some thoughts..

 

Thank you very very much! I’ll definitely go that route as it was a better option than what I had originally envisioned.

 

Nice! Just remember to fuse accordingly and you'll be all set. Post some pictures up when you're done! Still getting my rack squared away (hopefully this week) and then i'll be following you in adding some lights to it. Cant wait!

 

Oh sweet! Which rack are you going with?
I haven’t ordered the lights as they’re roughly $70 each and ideally I’d like to do 8 total 4 on each side. I was told they were .4 amps each so the 5amp fuse per side should be more than enough

 

Haha, good question. My rack is a custom kb voodoo that's been shortened using tnutz extruded aluminum and custom brackets to mount to my toolbox tonneau combination. Have a plan in my head; hopefully I can execute on it. If I remember i'll try to post it back up here. It'll be on my build thread though.

 

Oh very cool! I’d love to see it when you’re done. We repurposed our kb that was on my Tacoma which used the king bed variant on the short bed and bought different crossbars for use for the 22’

 

Wow! That's quite a lineup. Are they all for you or do you share them with someone else?
How are you liking the '22? Been dabbling with the idea of picking up a '22 later on this year or a '23 next year. We'll see..

 

Haha my pops has the new 22 and I traded in my Tacoma for a tundra. Neither of us had 4x4 so it was our primary reason to upgrade

 

For anyone still wondering this, I just successfully ran wire through the back side of my cab in a 2010 . So on the bottom passenger side in back of the body hidden in the body/box crack is a round rubber plug. Pop that out w a flat head. Then from inside the cab, remove 1x14mm bolt holding the seat belt so you can remove the bottom kick plate trim, door weather stripping and side panel. I then drilled a hole through the now exposed body ( I drilled a few inches up the metal hump, you'll see what I mean if you do it) and then fed my wire thru that then floated it inside the body cavity about 16 inches , and hooked it w my pointer finger grabbing from the hole we found earlier after 10 mins of finessing lol .. poke a hole in the rubber cap then slide it down the wire and put it back. I then ran my wire following the factory wire loom down the passenger side of the cab, removing the kick plates, then up the foot well and across the underside of the dash to access my switches.