Tail light wiring diagram

Trailer harness combines stop and turn for left and right sides. While topper is stop aka brake only, no turns. Then dome is topper only. Ground can be shared though.

adding a 4 pin tow harness is easy, Curt makes them. Though I thought all 3rd gen’s came with them? Getting a 7 pin takes a bit more work. I still haven’t done my tundra 7 pin. Course I also don’t own a trailer so no sense of urgency.

for trailer battery charging you want a circuit breaker rather than a fuse. Some good info in a thread I can dig up on Tundras.com if you want. But I’d probably recommend you try to just replace / repair Oem harness parts from new or eBay or junkyard / pick n pull if your truck came with a 7 pin. If it didn’t then I would imagine there has to be a thread for adding it.

 

So I bought the truck from a buddy and the camper shell originally had the tag fuse box, but his dog chewed up the wires coming from the tag fuse box to the led and third tail light, as well must have broke off the tag fuse box because it is no longer there but you can see where it was mounted.

so with that being said the wires from the tail light are still there coming from a drilled hole into the bed. Which is three wires which fed the tag fuse box but now they are just wires. Which I assume one is power to the led, a ground and one supplied to the third taillight that is powered up when the headlights/ taillights come on. So my thought was to get a 3 prong weather proof Connector and a weather proof fuse box and put a fuse between the power source going to the led but before the connection and then wire in the other two wires into the plug and match them up with the opposite side of the plug going to the led and third taillight and then have the led and third taillight share a ground.

does this sound accurate? From what I have seen about your other post and the stuff you make your very knowledgeable about automotive electrical where that isn’t necessarily my strong suit, I’m better at turning wrenches.

 

The colors you mentioned imply stop aka brake, ground and dome. Unclear where dome is sourced. It could be parking lights or constant 12v from somewhere else. If it’s connected to green on the brake connector then it’s parking light. Brake is blue at that connector. Ground is white w black stripe.

I would just replace the TAG myself but you can bypass it and connect wires too. No fuses are really needed, I kinda hate inline fuses. The brake and parking light circuits already have fuses. The tag is like double bagging something so it doesn’t leak. But I still like it. Because it’s a nice compact clean way to get 4 outputs from 6 wire inputs.

 

None of this has any real overlap with a tow harness. Outside of ground and maybe power. Independent stuff. Cause third brake light doesn’t have turn while tow has stop + turn for L and R.

 

I did take off the taillight the other day and it was spliced into the green wire.

alright well then if I don’t have to have a fuse box (because like you I don’t care for inline fuses and was going to buy one that I could incorporate into the power source wire without splicing it and causing another failure point) but I figured I needed to have one since originally it had one.

 

My ARE on the '02 Tundra had one. It's not unusual to use a fuse off the already fused brake/parking light circuit. That kinda adds a tiny bit of protection in the sense that if your shell chmsl does short and blow the fuse, you'd still have working brake lights on the taillights. But I think anyone who is decently aware of basic maintenance and safety will keep an eye out for stuff like that. Sort of a "take care of your stuff" sort of thing.

Parking light feeding dome is kinda dumb to me b/c you don't really want the dome on with parking lights so you'd leave it switched off, but then to turn it on you have to turn on parking lights first? Which is kinda annoying. But I guess at least the ECU times it out so you don't leave it on by mistake and kill the battery? For 3rd gen Tacoma it's nice to just set it on cargo, that's where I think it belongs, but your truck and my truck didn't come with those super handy bed lights that were added in 2020. So, the vled bed light kit is the next best option there.

Anyway, long story short, just connect the wires if that's all you want to do. Make sure everything is properly insulated and check functionality and loom it up and you're gtg.

 

Awesome thank you for your help, I already ordered a three prong weather sealed plug, 20g wire ( to feed from led / third taillight to plug) and braided wire loom to make it look good.

 

20 is ok but we mostly use 18 as the thinnest, it's easier to work with than the 20. But you'll be just fine with 20.