How to wire light bars so they come on with high beams?

2021 Tundra SR5. I installed Cali raised dual LED lightbars behind the grill today. I don't want to use their cheeseball switch. I only want the light bars to be activated with the factory high beam switch.

The switch that came with the lightbar harness has three wires, a black, white and a blue. Black is likely ground, but I'm not sure whether or not the white or blue is power. Third wire is probably for the indicator light on the switch.

Also would like to know where the best way to tap into the high beam circuit would be so I can use it to power the relays.

Thanks for the help... I did a search in this forum and wasn't able to come up with anything

 

If I remember right (I'm just a first gen guy) I think depending on what headlights you have you may have to get a canbus converter in order to get the signal from the lights. If you have regular halogen bulbs you may be able to tap in to the hi beam positive for those.

 

I wouldn't tie them into high beams. You hit the high beams on the road and the bars are seen by LE, you're asking for a ticket. Just my .02.

 

Relay is your friend. Trigger off high beam power.

 

what he said.
very bad idea.

 

I did my first gen bumper light bar off hi beams. No problems yet.
Edit: Hell seems like a lot of people here just run their light bars full time and think they aren't blinding people.

Yes. I didn't mention that but definitely want to use a relay controlled circuit.

 

The truck is for off road use only. Its not even registered. I get a lot of you lower 48ers arent used to wide open spaces or months with only 2-3 hours of daylight like parts of Alaska.

My headlights are factory LED.... I was planning to tap into the high beam fuse to power the relay for the lightbars. Will that not work? Not familar with canbus.

If that wont work, is there anywhere else I can tap into to get them to come in with the highbeam switch?

 

I said I wanted to use the high beam circuit to power the relays in my original post

 

Is there a hi beam specific fuse? Or just general headlight fuse?

 

There are two high beam specific fuses. One for each side. Just tested them with my multimeter. Only hot when hi beams are turned on. Canbus led headlights or not, I dont see why I couldnt get one of those fuse taps with a wire lead coming off of it, and then use it to switch on the relays for the light bars...

 

Sounds good to me. Like I said I'm just a 1st gen guy who reads around. Can't remember when the canbus specific stuff matters but I feel like I've seen it regarding light bars. Maybe it's more of a 3rd gen thing.

 

If you wire the harness to your battery one wire (blue or white only) will have 12 volts. Whichever one doesn't is the one you need to apply your 12 volt positive from your fuse tap to. The one that does just needs to be taped off as it's only necessary if using a regular switch. The ground should also be unnecessary as I think it's only used to make the regular switch light up.

 

Most supplied switches seem to run black ground, blue power, and white ACC. Not sure, hook up everything so switch works, then with switch off multimeter blue and white. Whichever has no power with switch off is your trigger wire...that taps into highbeam power.

 

OK well I got it working. A simple fuse tap with a wire lead off the high beam mini fuse works great. The bad part is one of the light bars keeps blowing fuses. The other one works fine. I swapped plugs on the wiring harnesses to see if there was a wiring issue, but it blew the fuse on the same lightbar. To be perfectly clear the same lightbar blew fuses on both wiring harnesses while one lightbar works using both wiring harnesses. Pretty disappointed with the Cali LED setup. The hardware was junk, the screw heads to mount the brackets were two different sizes, it was missing two lock nuts and washers. The overall quality of the wiring harness is poor and a big "made in china" stamp on the lightbar boxes. The lightbars themselves seem pretty cheap. I was skeptical of the price (you get what you pay for), but have seen tons of positive reviews about the Cali LED stuff so I took a gamble. The mounting brackets fit well but the holes but I had to drill new holes for the lower lightbar otherwise the solid portion of the grill would have covered more than half of it.

There is also no way to permanently index the lightbars. They are just held into the brackets by pressure. When going over bumps or offroading they are sure to move. I'll have to drill another hole through the bracket and into the light bar and stick a pin in there so it cant wobble.

 

Just applied 12v directly to the lightbar from a battery.... doesnt even turn on

 

Not sure exactly what light bar you got but I would consider taking it apart and siliconing it to get a better seal from the elements. Or at the very least tighten the little allen head screws just a bit, if you want them to last a bit longer.

Probably something burned up in there. I would like to think they would do an exchange depending on where you got it from.

 

I got it from Cali raised Offroad which was drop shipped from cali raised LED. Its their brand of lightbar

 

Request a refund.

diode dynamics or Baja designs since it seems like you fall in the 20% of enthusiasts that actually *need* auxiliary lighting.

 

I'm planning on doing this with my Diode Dynamics 30" Stage Series light bar. I had this installed on my Pathfinder and I had them use the high beam power to activate the relay for the high. Plus I had a three position switch they I could turn the light bar anytime, with high beams or off. I'm just going to need to figure out where is best to tie into high beams. I would like to make it as clean as possible.