UZJ100 Rear Hatch Lighting: How-to & Wiring guide

[LJE]

Hi folks!

I'm writing this up as a guide on how to install my rear hatch lighting setup (housings & parts list available over here @ The Artisan Garage!). Right now the housing design is based around the Diode Dynamics rock lights, which I know are expensive. They've very well made, the illumination is nice & even, and the switchable high/low power are great. However, most importantly to me, they're built here in the USA. I may evaluate other options in the future, but for the moment I think provide the best setup out there.

Is this a ~$220 problem (after DD lights, my housings, and necessary wiring)? That's up to you to decide, but as someone who hates working in the dark, it's a huge improvement over just the dome light that's so far forward in the 100 Series. I have some LEDs in my dome lights, and here's what the tailgate looks like with my drawer system in place - I adjusted the exposure to match what I was seeing in real life:

The interior of the drawers are SUPER dark when they're opened - sucks to dig through to find a tool. I know headlamps are a thing for a reason, but I thought that there's gotta be a better way...


And here it is:

Boom.
Quite the improvement eh?

Now, let's talk about how to install these things...

Step 0: Gather your tools & supplies! I think this was everything other than a trim pry tool & insulated spade connectors.

(baby monitor optional)

I chose to solder all the connections that I didn't make removable with spade connectors, but you could use butt splices as well.

Step One: Install the Diode Dynamics Rock Lights into the Lumberjack Engineering housings:
There's 'notches' on two opposing sides of the rock lights (you can see the notch on the right side in the below photo). I'd recommend putting the wire towards the 'tall' side of the housing, but it probably doesn't matter:

Align those notches with the side in the housing that has the protrusion on one side & the screw on the other. Here's the protrusion I'm talking about:

You'll want to 'rock' the light into place - push the protrusion side in first, then the side that'll get the screw - like the below photo:

You can now tighten the screw down (using a 2.5mm Allen key) into the other notch until you feel like the light is sufficiently secured.
Will you damage the powercoat on the light body slightly with the tip of the screw? Probably. But, these things are meant to live in wheel wells, so it'll be OK.
Once the screw is tight, go ahead and tighten down the nut to lock everything in place- should end up looking something like the below:

Repeat with the other side!

Sweet! Now we've got the lights in the housings. Let's move on the the hardest part of this all... wiring the dang things!

 

[LJE]

Step II: Wiring. Here's the overall wiring schematic:

Let's talk through this first. This wiring setup is designed to accomplish these things:

1. Must automatically turn on when the hatch is opened.
   1. This is accomplished by grabbing the ground from the switch coming off the latch mechanism. This wire only becomes grounded when the hatch is opened - this is actually what the body ECU uses to know if you've opened the hatch, and we can use it to our advantage here. If we instead chose to use a constant-ground, the hatch lights would turn on any time the dome lights do (i.e, whenever someone opens any door). That'd suck. So do this instead.
2. Mustautomatically turn off if the hatch is left open long enough.
   1. I don't want to open my rear hatch in the daylight, forget the lights are on, and then walk away.
   2. This is accomplished by grabbing +12V from the rear dome light - the body ECU will turn those off after 30 minutes has passed, so the rear hatch lights will also turn off at that point.
3. I still want to be able to turn off the lights with the hatch open.
   1. I don't always want to be blasting all this light if I'm just hanging out. That's why the toggle switch for high/low power also has a middle 'off' position.

Alright - so now that we know where we're going, let's talk through how to get there. The below (poorly executed) video should help a little bit. It starts off by talking about the vehicle-side wiring, but it does get to the light-side wiring as well.



I suggest using 22 gauge 3-conductor cable to run between the two lights. The driver's side light is where power/ground come into, and then those get sent off to the passenger side light from there. The Diode Dynamics rock lights lights only pull one amp each, so running 22 gauge for one of them is totally appropriate. You'll need 6 feet for it (that'll give you a few inches little extra - easier to tuck extra wire somewhere than it is to stretch the wire & lengthen it...)

I personally chose to have the +12V wire coming into the housing with a female insulated spade connector on it - that lets me just snap it right onto the middle position switch when we do final install. We'll talk about how to get that +12V from the rear dome light & through the rubber wiring boot between the rear hatch and the body later.

The ground connection I ran into the drivers side switch housing, and soldered it together with the ground for the drivers side light & the ground for the passenger side light & heatshrunk the connection.

Here's what that looks like on the drivers side- it looks like a lot, but it's pretty straight forward. I used blue for my ground because I have a bunch of it, but you use whatever color you won't mix up with something else in the future. You just need a couple feet here of 20 gauge - you'll want a male spade connector on the end of it:

This is a good time to point out that the connections on the switch might be backwards from what you'd expect. The switch I supply with the housing has a "I" in the 'down' position and a "II" in the 'up' position. The middle (where our +12V from the dome light will go) pin gets connected to the bottom pin when the switch is toggled upwards, and it's connected to the top pin when it's toggled downwards. So if we want our switch up position to be high power on the lights, we connect the red/orange wire for the driver & passenger light to the bottom terminal, and then the yellow/white (which is low power) to the top terminal. You can do that with crimp spade connectors, or solder + heat shrink it (like I did).

If that didn't make sense, leave a comment or just copy the above photo. The black wire on the diode dynamics light is ground, so that gets tied together with our wire running to the hatch switch (blue in my case) and the wire in the 3 conductor cable running to the passenger side (black in my case).

Whew. I think that's actually the most 'complex' part of this. It's really pretty straight forward, so hopefully the diagram will make it intuitive for people.


This is also where I realized I forgot to take a photo of the strain relief - I'd suggest taking a small ziptie & loop it around the ground & 3 conductor cable & zip it around the protruding screw head that secures the drivers side light. That'll prevent the connections from getting yanked on later when we install this.

I also realized I didn't take a photo of the passenger side - it's child's play in comparison. Just crimp spade connectors (male on the light side, female on the 3 conductor cable side) onto the ends of the wires.

Congrats! You've prepped the light-side wiring. Set aside the light housings & wiring, and let's move on to the prepping the vehicle-side wiring next.

 

[LJE]

Alright - so we've got the lights taken care of. Now it's time to tackle the vehicle side of the equation!

Step D: Remove the rear hatch trim panels:
Start by removing the upper rear hatch trim - the sides of the upper trim get pulled inwards, while the top strip gets pulled downward.

The best thing I think I can do is show this picture that highlights the slots where the plastic trim tabs go into the sheet metal - the arrow represent the direction the clips snap into from, so you should pry in the opposite direction:

(do be careful - the upper trim panel clips are non-replaceable!)

Now, time to remove the lower trim panel (where the lights will snap around). First order of business is to pull the screws out of the interior handle and remove that plate:

I found the easiest way to get the little screw covers out of recessed in the handle is to use the blade of a knife (or something else super thin) to pry from this side:

If you do it like that, you'll avoid all the chewed-up marks that you can see on the long sides in the photo...

Do that on both sides, then remove the screws under it & pull the handle off. That will then let you pull off the handle trim plate (I think you have to pull the interior latch lever as you do this - but you're smart, you can figure it out!). When you're done it should look like this:

(that wire you see is actually the hatch 'sensor' wire that we'll be using for our switched ground later on, shhhh, don't spoil the surprise for the other kids though!)

Finally, go ahead and pull the rear lower trim panel off now. It just comes straight down - as usual, a trim pry tool is helpful here.

Here's the backside of the trim panel showing the red clips - these at least are replaceable if needed!

BAM! You're done pulling trim panels. Time to move onto the vehicle-side wiring!

 

[LJE]

Episode V: The Electrical Wiring Strikes Back:

DISCONNECT YOUR VEHICLE'S BATTERY! Everything should be fused & protected, but just in case. Like Nike says, 'Just do it!'

Now it's time to do the vehicle-side wiring. Go ahead and pop out the rear dome light cover:

Once that's done, pull out your bulb (or in my case, the LED panel) and take the 4x screws that you see out:

That then gets you this dangly boi:

You can leave that there for the moment - now let's move onto getting the +12V wire through the rubber boot!
Go ahead and pull the rear headliner trim panel - this just pops straight down. Totally forgot to grab a picture of it, but this should expose both the end of the headliner (where we'll snake the wire forward to get to the dome light) and the entrance for the rubber boot that runs between the hatch and the body of the vehicle.

Now, go ahead and pop both ends of the boot free - Trim pry tool/small flat screw driver and some gentleness will get you far here:

Now, the next part can be accomplished several ways. If you're like me and like to save the giant zipties that you sometimes get with stuff (like, big enough to be improvised handcuffs or something), then you're in luck! Cut the head of the ziptie off, drill a couple holes in that end, loop your wire through both holes so it's retained, and then feed the pointy end through the boot & use it to pull the wire through:

I used some silicone dialetric grease to make things go WAY easier - this made a huge difference, so I'd recommend something to help it slide through easier.

Done! That was easy. I hadn't heard of the ziptie trick before, but stumbled on it while I was doing my research for the product design.

Next step is to snake the wire forward to the dome light. My ziptie wasn't quite long enough for this, so I just brought out my electrician's fish tape. A thin stick would work here too - again, you're smart & I believe in you! You could probably even use the truck's dipstick if you didn't have anything else...

Your fish tape/stick/dipstick should come from the domelight cutout and head back to the exit of the headliner - you can see the tip of mine poking out next to the red wire in this terribly blurry photo:

Vehicle-side wiring continued in the next post...

 

[LJE]

Where were we? Oh yeah, that's right, wiring the vehicle side.
Here's our red wire hanging out of our dome light cutout:

We want to attach this to the wire that enters into the side of the connector that has the clip on it - the one with the red arrow below:

You can do that with butt splices, soldering, etc. Your choice!

With that taken care of, we can reinstall the dome light & go back to the other end of our red wire. Trim it approximately to a length that'll reach down into the drivers side hatch light housing we'll install later (again, longer is better than shorter), and use the ziptie trick again. I chose to let my wire exit up here in one of the trim clip cutouts - it's super wide, so there's plenty of room for both the trim clip and the wire:

I then went ahead and wrapped my wire around the existing harness to keep it from flopping around. Go ahead and put an insulated female spade connector on the end of it - that's what will plug into the center of your switch in the drivers side housing.

And you're done with the +12V wire! Go ahead and snap both ends of the rubber boot between the body and the hatch back into place, and reinstall the rear headliner trim piece. You're in the home stretch now!

Now we need to turn our attention to wiring up the switched ground that comes from the latch assembly. Here's the connector by the latch (ignore the fact that I still had the lower trim on in this photo...):

With that trim panel off, you'll see where they doubled the wire back on itself (on the 'vehicle side' of the connector) and taped it to the rest of the harness. Disconnect the connector, & cut that tape to give you some slack. Trim back some of the electrical tape wrapped around the two wires.

Here's what you should see - the RED wire with the BLUE tracer line is what you're looking for.

Go ahead and splice into that RED wire with the BLUE tracer line (again, butt connectors or solder & tape) a wire long enough to make it over to your ground wire for the hatch lights. Tape things back up & double the wire back on itself again like the factory had it:

On the bare end of the wire, go ahead and crimp an insulated female spade connector on it.

YOU'RE DONE WITH THE WIRING! Woo! You should now have the +12V line from the dome light and the switched ground from the hatch latch mechanism hanging loose:

Now onward to final assembly & installation!

 

[LJE]

We made it! Time for final assembly.

Go ahead and snap both of the light housings onto the lower trim piece - the 'short/wide' part snaps onto the 'bottom' of the trim first, and then the 'tall' part snaps in right where it'd be sitting next to the window:

The little 'bump out' in the housing is to run the wiring through to get it all nice and hidden (excuse the rough edge on it below - I trimmed that part on my prototype housings, the production versions are printed with the ends open:

That lets you route the wires to where they jump under the trim immediately, protecting them & hiding them from any view. It's slick!

You should then be able to connect the spade connectors over on the passenger side light housing too - this is what it should look like all assembled:

Go ahead and connect the +12V wire and the switched ground wire from the vehicle-side wiring to the light-side wiring via the spade connectors, and pop that bottom trim panel back up into place! I wouldn't run that 3 conductor cable too near the clips as you do- it'll interfere with them seating properly. Reinstall the interior handle trim plate & handle, and then once it's all in place & seated you can install the upper trim panel.... AND YOU'RE DONE!

REVEL IN YOUR PERFECTLY LIT TAILGATE!

Here's some comparison shots - my drawers cast a TERRIBLE shadow over half of my tailgate, so you'd loose stuff all the time. Again, the photos were exposure-adjusted to match what I was actually seeing:

No hatch lights.... It's just a void on the forward portion of my tailgate:

...and now with the hatch lights turned on! You can't even tell that this *wasn't* taken with my surgical-suite level lighting in my garage turned on. But no, just the hatch lights. Outstanding!

The 'low' setting is nice for everyday (night?) use, while the 'high' setting will be perfect when I'm working on something on the tailgate at night. I'm a HUGE fan! I designed the light housings with a 10° "inward" (towards the centerline of the vehicle) tilt, that when coupled with the illumination pattern of the DD rock lights casts really nice & even lighting across the tailgate. I'm a bit of lighting nerd, and these are excellent.3

Diode Dynamics tells me that they've got a version coming out this year that instead of just white high/low, it's switchable between red and white! That'd be ideal! At the moment in order to get a red/amber version you can swap the lenses on the lights, but being able to switch on-the-fly would be PERFECT. I don't have a timeline on that one, but I'm excited for it.


Let me know what you think! First time doing this extensive of a write-up, but I wanted anyone that bought these housings to know EXACTLY what was required to install them, hah. I considered it a two to do it the first time, so hopefully this guide knocks it down to a banana-and-a-half rating.

 

[LJE]

(Reserved for snacks)

 

[fullsend100]

Just installed these and I love them. Super sleek and functional. Thanks for the detailed instructions, they helped a lot! I went for amber so they are a bit softer on the eye at night camping. I didn't bother wiring them to turn on and off automatically with the other lights, I just want them on and off only based on the switch as I'm using them for camping.

 

[LJE]

Just installed these and I love them. Super sleek and functional. Thanks for the detailed instructions, they helped a lot! I went for amber so they are a bit softer on the eye at night camping. I didn't bother wiring them to turn on and off automatically with the other lights, I just want them on and off only based on the switch as I'm using them for camping.

Awesome! I've sold a few of these sets thus far but you're the first one to get me feedback. Glad to hear the install guide helped!

 

[fullsend100]

Here's a pic of what mine look like

 

[LJE]

Here's a pic of what mine look like

View attachment 4095642

That's OUTSTANDING! Do you mind if I use that photo to promote across social media?

 

[hoser]

I didn't bother wiring them to turn on and off automatically with the other lights, I just want them on and off only based on the switch as I'm using them for camping.

I didn't see it mentioned but as @fullsend100 sort of said, if you wire to the dome light, it'll turn on/off automatically but it'll also time out after about 20 minutes when camping. The 3-way switch can be wired as "dome/off/always on."

 

[fullsend100]

That's OUTSTANDING! Do you mind if I use that photo to promote across social media?

Yea sure, happy to support your stuff. Its great having LC100 specific vendors like you.

 

[LJE]

I didn't see it mentioned but as @fullsend100 sort of said, if you wire to the dome light, it'll turn on/off automatically but it'll also time out after about 20 minutes when camping. The 3-way switch can be wired as "dome/off/always on."

Yessir - that's correct! I wanted that, because I oftentimes open my hatch during the day at events & walk away. I'd probably remember to turn the lights off, but just to be sure this makes sure I cannot kill my battery with these, hahah. Maybe a little minor inconvenience at night if I have to go open/close another door every 30 minutes I want to keep the lights on, but usually I don't need that much time at the tailgate at night. It's good for people to know that there's options though!

Yea sure, happy to support your stuff. Its great having LC100 specific vendors like you.

It's been a ton of fun! Although the 4th Gen 4Runner community is super cool too - there's just so many of those trucks, hahaha.

 

[uzjmarten99]

Really liking these light housings. Install was fairly easy, just a bit tedious. Electrical work is not my favorite I must admit. The hardest part was dealing with diode dynamics tiny gauge wires but overall this is a really nice product. I also opted to wire the lights directly to 12v power instead of the dome light switched power. I always have the dome lights off and I already had 12v running to a national luna light right above the hatch area so it made sense. I will probably opt for some amber lenses in the future for an easier on the eyes experience. The fit and finish is excellent and there was some real thought put into the design. LJE Knocked it out of the park, I'll be on the lookout for what other products you develop for the 100 series

 

[LJE]

View attachment 4101184
Really liking these light housings. Install was fairly easy, just a bit tedious. Electrical work is not my favorite I must admit. The hardest part was dealing with diode dynamics tiny gauge wires but overall this is a really nice product. I also opted to wire the lights directly to 12v power instead of the dome light switched power. I always have the dome lights off and I already had 12v running to a national luna light right above the hatch area so it made sense. I will probably opt for some amber lenses in the future for an easier on the eyes experience. The fit and finish is excellent and there was some real thought put into the design. LJE Knocked it out of the park, I'll be on the lookout for what other products you develop for the 100 series

Thanks for the photo and the kind words! I love making the super-contour matched parts - they always turn out so satisfying hahaha.

Truck is look good (and well lit)! Do you mind if I use that photo on social media?

 

[uzjmarten99]

Thanks for the photo and the kind words! I love making the super-contour matched parts - they always turn out so satisfying hahaha.

Truck is look good (and well lit)! Do you mind if I use that photo on social media

oh no I don't mind at all, I was very pleased with the fit and finish.