Wiring Up A Camper Shell

Wiring up a Camper Shell By Larry Hampton Tools required: Materials required: Creeper Wire – about 6’ each for power and T‐20 Torx ground for both the brake light 8mm socket with driver handle or ratchet and the interior light, but you’ll Wire strippers need extra to pull with and to Wire cutters trim. Wire size depends on the Knife – snap blade type works good gage of wire you’re connecting. Rosin core solder Heat Shrink – appropriate to wire size Soldering iron Wire Loom – about 6’ total Lighter or heat gun Grommet Electrical tape Some sort of 4 wire plug (optional) Drill bits and drill I’ve been told by some people (the previous owner of my shell as well) to tie into one of the tail lights for the 3rd brake light on my shell. The only problem with this is, if you’re at a stop and turn on that turn signal, the 3rd brake light will blink with the signal, using the other turn signal, the brake light will just stay on. So this project is to show you how to do it right. I had planned on using a flat 4 trailer wire plug so that I could unplug the shell in case I need to take it off, but the plug I had planned on using wasn’t going to work (it had 4 wires on one end and 3 on the other with the 4th having an eyelet on it for the white wire ground), so I hard wired it for now leaving myself enough wire to correct this later. Since I already had everything, the cost to me was $0, I had heat shrink laying around from another project, the wire and loom I robbed from a harness from yet another project and the grommet was something I got from a box of spare parts from a project. Technically, you should remove the negative terminal from the battery while performing this project so you don’t blow a fuse grounding out a hot wire. I forgot to take pictures until I had already completed the under‐bed work, so sorry. Also, I’m putting all the pics at the end. The first thing you need to do is drop your spare tire, this makes it easier to access the brake light wires in the harness that runs behind the bumper, especially if you have a hidden hitch receiver. On my particular truck (2003 2wd), the two wires were stuck out of the loom that went to the trailer plug. They were sort of funny looking in that they had long molded rubber caps on the ends about an inch long, the total length was about 4” long so you don’t have a lot to work with, the wires were black and black with a red stripe on my truck, TRACket Paul had told me the positive was a light green. Now the positive in my left tail light was a light green with an orange or red stripe, maybe different trucks are different. One thing I’ve been told is, Ford keeps their color code for years, I believe the left tail light on my ’65 Mustang is light green with a red or orange stripe. There is a plastic piece taped to the harness that runs across the spare tire holder that pokes thru a hole to hold it in place, if you poke it out of the hole, it’ll give you a little slack to pull the harness down to make it easier to access, just remember to poke it back in there before you replace the spare. Clip the rubber cap off the wires and strip the ends back about 3/8”. Take your wires that you’ll be connecting to these and do the same. Now many people like to use crimp style connectors, but in an exterior environment, I don’t like to use them. Soldering isn’t that hard and I’m not expert, but I can do it, so you can too. I’ve also used my soldering iron to repair broken plastic before as sort of a plastic welder as well. Cut a piece of heat shrink about 1” – 1½”long and slip it over one of the wires, if you forget here it’s no big deal as you can slip it over the long end. The best way to hook two wires together in preparation for soldering is probably to bend each at a 90, then hook them together and bend them on over. You don’t want to twist them prior to this, as after you bend them over, they’ll flair out and make it easier to twist them around themselves. This should make for a nice connection if the wire is pretty fine, if it’s more course, I split the ends into two groups, like a V, then put the V notches together and twist them around each other. In any case, I give the wires a little tug to make sure they don’t come apart, then solder. No one has ever taught me to solder, I learned from watching and trying it on my own. Once the soldering iron is plugged in, I wait until the solder will melt on the tip of the iron, it helps to have a clean tip (as referenced from my using my iron to weld plastic). Once the iron is hot, touch it to the wire to heat it up, copper will heat up in a few seconds, you’ll know this if you’re holding the wire close to the end of the insulation, but you want the wire to be hot, so the solder will flow via capillary action into the spaces between the strands, otherwise you’re just blobbing it on the top. You can still save this, keep the iron on the wire and it’ll heat up and the blob will get sucked into the openings. While you’re waiting for your first splice to cool, take the T‐20 Torx and remove the power plug housing in the bed. Don’t remove just the plug, take out the whole box. Once removed you’ll need to unplug the outlet, there is a little white clip on top of the clip that holds the plug into the outlet, be careful, I broke mine, then you can pull the plug out and set the box aside. Once the wire has cooled, slide the heat shrink over the splice and center, then use the lighter or heat gun to shrink the tube. I then wrap some good quality electrical tape over the heat shrink, just one layer will do, you still need to get these into the wire loom. Tip: Although it’s hard to do here due to the length of the wires coming off the harness, it’s a good idea to stagger your splices so they’ll fit in the loom easier and it just looks neater. This is even more important if you use butt connectors, like when some people do a radio install and have 8 wires coming off the radio and have 8 butt connectors right next to each other, that takes up a lot of space. Do this to both wires, then take the loom and place the wires inside it, then take the electrical tape and tape the end to the harness and continue up the loom taping it shut, like the factory did. You’ll need 4’‐5’ of loom to get up in the bedside, run it up to the opening to get an idea of how much you’ll need. If you’ll reach your hand inside the opening like you’re trying to get to the backside of the tail light, you’ll feel a sort of ‘wall’ that sticks out that you’ll need to get around, this is the metal piece that is the corner of the bed where the bed extender attaches to, and since it’s metal, it could wear thru the insulation on the wires. I drilled my hole in this metal piece about even with the base of the slope, but towards the front of the bed. Drill a pilot hole first, then finish with the appropriate size, my grommet was in a bracket, so I just found a bit that just fit that hole and used it as my second bit. Put the grommet in the hole. Now remove the 3 plugs that cover up the bolts that hold the tail light in place. Next, remove the 3 bolts with the 8mm socket and gently pull the light straight back and twist the bulb sockets from the housing and lay the housing aside. You can now confirm the amount of loom you’ll need by running the two wires around the ‘wall’ and thru the grommet. You want a little slack, but you don’t want so much extra wire and loom that it’s flopping around. Trim the loom as needed, being careful not to knick the wire and take the excess wire thru the grommet, leave yourself about 6”‐8” of wire hanging out of the grommet and cut the wires off. Now comes the fun part, you want to pull back the loom from the plug for the 12v outlet box 3”‐
4” and expose the wires. You don’t want to cut the wires, but you want to remove the insulation from them a couple inches behind the plug and you only want to do 1 wire at a time because, unlike the brake light wires, this power wire is live. Take the knife and cut around the circumference of the wire, these strands aren’t very fine, so I doubt you’ll cut any of the wires. Do this again about a ½” from the first cut then take the knife and slit the insulation open between the 2 cuts and peel the insulation off. Take the wire with both hands on the insulation and push them together and make the wire flair out and open a ‘window’ in the middle. Now take the appropriate wire that you cut off earlier and strip the end about 3/8”‐1/2” and poke it thru the ‘window’, then ‘close’ the window and wrap the end of the wire around these strands, you don’t let the insulation of the loose wire coming in contact with the strands of the plug wire as you’ll be soldering them. Then take the soldering iron and solder the wires together. After the wire has cooled, take the electrical tape and tape the exposed parts, than lay the new wire down against the plug wire directing it away from the plug and tape it to the plug wire. If the first wire you did was the power wire (mine was grey with a yellow/green stripe), put a piece of tape over the other end of the wire so you don’t ground it out if you didn’t disconnect the battery (like I didn’t). Now do the same procedure on the second wire and replace the plug loom and tape the end and the loom back to the point the new wires come out of it. Place the remainder of the loom over these two wires and tape the loom to the wires and other loom, tape the loom up then run this around the ‘wall’ and out the turn signal opening. At this point it depends on how big your grommet it, if it’s big enough to run the loom thru it, then I would, in any case, you want the grommet to fit tight against the wires, in my case I had to run these two wires separately by taping another wire that I had run thru the grommet from the inside the bed to the end of the wire (I wire stripped the ends and twisted the strands, then taped it as it was a tight fit) and pulled each wire individually thru the grommet. Now you can put the tail light back on the truck and plug the outlet plug back into the outlet and replace the outlet in the side of the bed. At this point, if you chose to put a plug in, this is where you would do it, using the techniques described before. If you are just hard wiring it, it’s the same but without the plug and 4 wires to solder instead of 8. It’s nice to cover these wires with loom as well, since I’m going to be putting the plug in later (and I’ll add it to this write up and take pics) I left it alone for now. Put the spare back under the truck and put your tools away. Between eating, playing ball with my son, and taking pictures, it took 3‐4 hours to finish this.
Pic 1 new loom from existing loom to LR corner of pic Pic 2 new loom going between shackle and hitch Pic 3 brake light loom up inside fender Pic 4 plug power wire with insulation removed Pic 5 power wire ‘windowed’ and new wire ‘flared’ Pic 6 wires connected ready for solder Pic 7 wires soldered Pic 8 wires taped Pic 9 ground wires ready for solder Pic 10 grommet in metal ‘stake pocket’ Pic 11 plug wires soldered and taped for loom Pic 12 wires soldered and heat shrunk, done!!!!