Has anyone lit their bed with LED lights? I have a Extang SolidFold cover on mine and I'd like to put some lights in there so I can see what's in the back at night with the cover folded out. I'm thinking LED because they are small and can be mounted up under the sides without worrying about cargo tearing them up.

I'm thinking a switch so I can turn it on and off without having to unlock the truck or go turn on a dome lamp. My concern is me, my wife or daughter leaving the light on and killing the battery.

Has anyone done this and how do you address the dead battery potential? What wires do you tap into and where?

 

I have a set of driving lights on my headache rack wired into my 7th wire on my trailer light setup. Also have a way to bypass it to where I can remotely turn it on. I don't have a cover but it allows me to see what's in the bed. I'm about to go to LED's on my new headache rack so I don't know how much light they will throw out but I would think that it would be enough. Check out R & P Carriages, they will have the best selection of LED lights that are small enough to work for your purposes. Give me a bit and I'll get you a link of some that might work for you, I have nothing else to do tonight.

 

they have some cheapy led strips with switch at auto stores, like 10 dollars. you could put them in and see, it would give you an idea what it would look like before you went full blown.

 

Yeah, I already bought the cheap LED strip with a switch for $20 (2 strips of 6 LEDs). While I'm waiting on some split loom to come in I thought I'd ask and see who else has done this. I searched the forum and did not find much.

 

Seems like an ideal solution would be a self-adhesive LED strip lights mounted up under the inside bed rails pointing down and a mercury/magnetic/plunger switch on the tailgate. Open the tailgate, light on, close the tailgate, light off.

For power, is there un-switched 12V on the trailer hookups? If not, you probably have to run a wire from the cab.

 

Recon kit, switch on bed rail, wired direct to battery with fused wire.

 

I want to say my relay for the backup light bypass switch is on the 12V trailer wire but I don't remember exactly. I wired that well over a year ago now...got me thinking about it. Probably won't rest now until I find out. lol

 

I've done this on my last two trucks. $20 set of LED driving lights from walmart, a switch,inline fuse and some good two sided tape. Run the fused wire back from the battery. I stuck the lights on each side by the tailgate facing forward and ran the wires behind the tail lights and put the switch next to one of them. I haven't had a light fall off yet. I didn't use the tailgate switch because if you haul with the gate open your bed lights are on the whole time. I've left mine on for hours after forgetting to turn them off and had no battery issues.

 

X2 - have the Recon kit and wired the exact same way. They are LED's with sticky tape and pre-wired. It took me longer to run the wire up to the battery than mounting them. I only turn them on at night so not sure how they could be left on. Good news is that they are LED's, the Recon kit will draw about an amp. On a 72 Ah battery (650 CCA), it could make it weak enough to not start the truck in 36 hours.

 

Ok I wanna do this to my truck but I want to tap off my dome light. Anyone knows what wires they are?