Toyota Tundra Forum

I have some LED strips that I want to wire under the bed rails to provide some light when my cover is down. What would be the best way to wire these to the existing cargo light so I don't need a separate switch.

I am thinking that I should be able to tap into the cargo light wire somewhere. The LEDs run on 12V so I'm hoping it would be pretty straight forward once I find the right location to tap into.

TIA

If I understand you want to add lights where there is one already. all you need to do is run the power lead from the led to the bulb side of the existing switch

Off the top of my head, I want to say it's a brown wire in the passenger rear step panel, but I could be wrong.

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2007 SR5 Crewmax 5.7L 4x4
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Thanks Tox, I'll check it out.

I have a bunch of LED strips that I bought for this too..Just going to wire them to my bed cover light that comes on when I open my bed cover.

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I'd run a new power wire and a relay just in case. I don't know how many LEDs are in each strip so it would be better safe than sorry.

relay wired like this:
85 pin- ground
86 pin- 12v+ to factory bed light
87 pin- 12v+ fused source
30 pin- out to LED strips +

just ground the LEDs where convenient

now when you flip your light switch, the LEDs will be powered from the new power source

The wire was the small brown wire on the rear drivers side step panel. The ground wire is the large white wire with a black stripe. I just wired the lights in to the existing wire. No relay.

I seriously doubt these lights draw anywhere near the current that the regular bulbs do. I guess I could check it to be safe. What would be a safe current draw to run with the existing lights? So far they seem to work fine this way. They light up the bed nicely at night.

I was planning something like this. Two dozen LEDs might draw an amp of power, probably less. I toyed around with clod cathode and some other ideas but they warm up too slow. I have some LEDs that will work. Might look for some better ones to put under the railing.

I used these strips, White LED Strip. They have 120 low current white leds.

When I measured them on the meter they used roughly 420ma of current. So both together are less than 1amp. I would hope that's safe. Seems like there should be at least an amp of wiggle room on the existing circuit.

You could disconnect the LEDs and measure the amperage of the cargo light alone. then check the fuse for the light and see what size it is. I know for AC current circuit breakers, they require no more than a 80% load. So a 10 amp breaker should only have 8 amps of power drawn through it. You could always switch the bed light to an LED light also, though that is kind of a pain to do.