Bed Lights

[Reit38]

 

 

Latest "mod". Cheap ebay strip LEDs. ive seen lot of guys tapping into theyre cargo light switch to activate but i wanted to be able to have truck off and be able to have the lights on still. only part i dont like is that you can see the LEDs in the front corner if you get down and look up there. but maybe theyre not noticeable if your not looking for them

[jblaylock]

How did you wire them in?

[Reit38]

tapped into the power on the trailer 7pin. ran to a toggle

[BlackZ71Silverado]

Looks good. I have lights in my truck bed but I took the cheap route. Got some BELL LED's that are magnetic and take 2AA batteries. no wiring involved.

[Reit38]

i thought $20 for everything was pretty cheap

[jblaylock]

Have any additional details? Which lights from ebay did you get, where did you run the wires? I'm going to put a soft tonneau on mine soon and would like to do this.

[Reit38]

ran out of waterproof wire connectors, they will be soon replaced

this is where the end of the LEDs is and the wire goes into this nice access whole then ran thru the box skin to the behind the tail light as seen above

 

 

Do a Ebay search for "5M 16.4FT 300 LED 3528 SMD Cool White Waterproof Strip" to find the LEDs

[Silverado_Monkey]

How did you run the LEDs to the other side bedrail? Did you cut the strip and solder an extension wire to get to the other side or did you buy 2 rolls? Can you show that in a pic?

Thx!

B

 

Great job BTW!

[[email protected]]

That's pretty sweet, same leds I use in my computer case .

[Reit38]

it was just one strip. on the nbs there is not a lip to hide the lights so they are unseen so i had to run them inside of the box frame, look in the front of your bed and you should see what im talking about. both ends of mine were filled with a little foam so i dug it out with my finger and used a wire snake to get from one side to the other. not real sure how else to describe it. guess i can try and get another pic to try and show this a little better tomorrow

[Silverado_Monkey]

it was just one strip. on the nbs there is not a lip to hide the lights so they are unseen so i had to run them inside of the box frame, look in the front of your bed and you should see what im talking about. both ends of mine were filled with a little foam so i dug it out with my finger and used a wire snake to get from one side to the other. not real sure how else to describe it. guess i can try and get another pic to try and show this a little better tomorrow

 

So, If i'm understanding you correctly the middle portion of the LED strip is buryed "unseen" where it snakes from one side to the other. Is the correct?

 

So if you started out with 16ft of lights, how many to feet are actually illuminating the bed of the truck on each side? 4' or 5'? If so those lights are super bright!

 

Thanks!

B

[Reit38]

driver side

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

passanger side

 

 

 

not real happy with the way this part turned out but it was all i could do without cutting them apart

[sw6416]

This will be my next mod ........ love the concept

[masonbid]

Latest "mod". Cheap ebay strip LEDs. ive seen lot of guys tapping into theyre cargo light switch to activate but i wanted to be able to have truck off and be able to have the lights on still. only part i dont like is that you can see the LEDs in the front corner if you get down and look up there. but maybe theyre not noticeable if your not looking for them

 

Great mod Reit38. Those smd look awesome. I'm loving my bed lighting too. GM should make it an option on these trucks!

This is gonna be my next mod for sure! Great job!

 

BTW does anyone know how much of a drain these will put on the battery? I'm thinking very little, as they are LEDs, correct?

 

Not so little... 3 leds per 12 volts = 20mA

So when you have say a 1m strip with 60 leds, that's 0.4 amp its drawing. I actually went camping and my toggle switch was flicked on by accident without me knowing so when i went to start my truck in the morning, dead battery... Too me 2 days to figure out why my battery died 2 days in a row.

[Reit38]

it is very handy to have them tapped off the trailer power so the key doesnt have to be on for them to work but if you happen to leave em on your in trouble. i agree it would be a nice option to have from the factory