Bed Lights, So Useless... But Fun

[Moridin]

Seriously. It's not like there's ever going to be a situation where without bed lights one is in serious trouble. Or even mildly inconvenienced, unless you don't have a flashlight, Cargo light doesn't work, and no cellular phone to use as a light source.

Oh... And a bed full of stuff to be unloaded in a specific order in the pitch black. So, yeah...

But the string of LED lights was cheap, and wire is always hanging around, so I put some in. And I have to say I'm digging them. Almost makes me want to have a reason to be completely unprepared, but have need of determining the state of my truck bed in the dark.

I had the other money pit come out to see them, and she basically said (in a nutshell), "Great, now you can see it's empty even at night."

I thought, "Yeah, but what if we didn't know it was? There's now a convenient switch to find out!" was an appropriate response. She wasn't impressed.

But she said it looked cool, and I guess that's something. And I agree, it does look cool. Pointless? Yeah, most likely... lol


Tonneau down



Tonneau down



Tonneau folded up to cab (yeah, not a big difference in the pic but it was definitely brighter all around... might be cool once the beer starts flowing)

 

[MotuMute]

Looks good. Clean and effective when ya do need in there at night. And Code Red emergencies are known to happen. Link for the LED strings? And how did you run your wiring?

 

[NickPic83]

wow that looks very bright. where did u get the lights and how did u wire it up?

 

[Rookie]

Looks good

 

[Yukon Joe]

I don't know why you talk this mod down to much??

This is one of the first mods I did. I love it and get a lot of use from it. Mine is hooked to a switch to turn on when I open the tail gate.

Yukon Joe
GLRE Support Raptor
WWW.RUNRAPTORRUN.COM

 

[Macman]

That is a really cool idea, thanks for sharing. Can you show us how you plumbed the wiring.

 

[ramx50]

Ya that does look good, +1 on the wiring

---------- Post added at 11:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:29 AM ----------

I don't know why you talk this mod down to much??

This is one of the first mods I did. I love it and get a lot of use from it. Mine is hooked to a switch to turn on when I open the tail gate.

Yukon Joe
GLRE Support Raptor
GREAT LAKES RAPTOR EXCURSIONS

What did you use for a switch and how did you mount it to work with your tail gate?

 

[Moridin]

Yeah, it definitely looks cool and if, like Yukon Joe, you actually get use out of them all the better!

The lights were by Anzo, actually called a "bed rail and multipurpose light" kit. Got it off Ebay a while back, but you can get them anywhere. There are 4 boxes on each strand, with 6 LED bulbs in each box. Yeah... they're bright.

I'm not where I can get pics right now, but the gist is I just ran a wire from the battery under the truck and zip tied to the stock harness going back. Brought the wires up by a tail light where, inside the bed, is a little hole. If you look on the other side of your tail light (in the bed) you'll see one on each side. Just brought the wire up through that and then under the bed rail. Lights came with 3M tape, but I bought some stronger stuff and used that. The ground wire I ran back down through the same hole and attached.

There are little clip/hook looking things underneath the bed rail, and I used small zip ties to tie the wire up to those to pull it up out of sight just a little bit more. Pretty straight-forward. The switch I put in the corner of the bed towards the top. But you could put that anywhere, or even run it into the cab. I preferred turning the lights on/off when at the bed of the truck, but like I said... you could run the switch anywhere.

 

[ajstar89]

Looks great! I did the LED strip lighting, here is what they look like. I also like how i can run any color I want, and adjust the brightness. I'am making a "how to" for the install that Ill post when work settles down.

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[Macman]

Awesome, look forward to seeing it.