blacksheep4
New member
I wired up my ditch lights a couple of weeks ago, but left the switch in the engine compartment until last weekend. It took me a while to figure out the best way to go about it, so I kept putting it off. I had a hard time finding all of the information in one source, so here is how I elected to go about passing the switch through the firewall and then wiring a new switch after cutting off the one provided by Baja Designs. I'm no electrician, so if anyone sees a better way to do this, please call me out. Hopefully this can help someone else out who hates electrical like me. It's not that bad guys!
OK first things first. If your lights/ whatever accessory you are trying to get through the grommet came with a pre-wired switch, cut that sucker off. Unless you want to cut a silver dollar sized hole through your firewall grommet. Make note if more than one wire is going into the same terminal, as those will need to be put back together when you reconnect to the new switch.
You're going to want to slice as small of a hole in the rubber grommet as possible to pass this group of wires through, here are a couple tricks that make it a quick and painless process. Tape the loose ends (the ones you just snipped from the old switch) as tightly as possible to a straightened out wire hanger. Next, find your favorite lube and go to town on the coat hanger. You can try going in dry, but save yourself the trouble and get things slippery.
I didn't take a picture of the firewall grommet from the engine compartment, but it's not hard to find. It's the thing that looks exactly like a firewall grommet. Jam your lubed up coat hanger into a spot that doesn't have wires running through it, and keep pushing until you feel it pop through into the driver's side footwell. If it comes out on the passenger side, things have already gone horribly wrong. Get inside the truck and pull through as much slack as you need. Cover the slits you've made with some sealant to keep the water out. Here's the view from the inside.
If you're going to use the same switch that you have previously removed, that's too easy. Just connect everything back into the right place. If you're using a third party switch like I did, colors are probably not going to match up. Baja Designs didn't make things easy by not providing a wiring diagram and using only red and red/black wires. Drink as many beers as necessary until you figure out what connects to what. Black = ground, that much was easy enough.
Remember the two wires that were in the same terminal before you cut the switch off? I taped those together after the 5th time getting confused. From left to right here I have fuse, ground, lights. Since Baja Designs used the same color for fuse and the lights, I pulled on the wires from the engine compartment to figure out which was which and put tape on the lights/ accessory wire so I wouln't lose it again. I won't admit to how long it took me to think of that idea. For your standard OEM switch the connections you need to make are GREEN= FUSE, RED1= RELAY/ ACCESSORIES RED2= DASH LIGHT CIRCUIT (I didn't do this, but is needed if you want new switch to light up when all other dash lights are on. If you need to know how to find that wire, I'm not your guy) BLACK= GROUND.
Once you have soldered, tapped, taped and/or whatever else is your preferred technique to connect everything to the new switch, test it out. You're probably like me and not totally confident in your electrical knowledge if you are still reading this as a guide, so before you get any further you might want to check your guesswork. Hit the switch and pray that nothing catches on fire. No fire and lights turn on? You probably haven't @#$%ed anything up yet, good job! Celebrate with another beer.
All that's left is to remove the dash panel, replace a blank switch with your new one, and clean up your wiring. First step to removing the panel to the left of the steering wheel is to take this kick plate thing off. Yank the hell out of it until it pops off.
Next you need to look for is a little plastic nut that you can't see in this crappy picture but it's circled. It will come off by hand. The other thing I've circled is a bolt that I can't remember 100% if I removed, possibly due to the aforementioned celebration beers. I think you need to remove it if you want to take the section of dash all the way off, but you just need to loosen it enough to get to the back of the switch panel.
Look over to the lower right side of the steering wheel for the plastic window that's hiding another bolt. Pop the window open with a trim piece removal tool or a screwdriver if you DGAF. I found the slot on top of the window to be the easiest, as the little window's hinge is on the bottom. Remove the bolt.
Now you should be able to loosen the panel enough to feed your wiring up behind it and reconnect your switch and replace the blank with your new faceplate. Mine doesn't really sit flush, need to do some trimming around the opening for it to fit perfectly. But for now, it gets the job done. Didn't take pictures of that whole process but if you've made it this far, you can figure it out. Put everything back together in reverse order.
Again, I am obviously not an expert by any means, but hopefully this comes up if someone who needs help with this actually uses the search function.
OK first things first. If your lights/ whatever accessory you are trying to get through the grommet came with a pre-wired switch, cut that sucker off. Unless you want to cut a silver dollar sized hole through your firewall grommet. Make note if more than one wire is going into the same terminal, as those will need to be put back together when you reconnect to the new switch.
You're going to want to slice as small of a hole in the rubber grommet as possible to pass this group of wires through, here are a couple tricks that make it a quick and painless process. Tape the loose ends (the ones you just snipped from the old switch) as tightly as possible to a straightened out wire hanger. Next, find your favorite lube and go to town on the coat hanger. You can try going in dry, but save yourself the trouble and get things slippery.
I didn't take a picture of the firewall grommet from the engine compartment, but it's not hard to find. It's the thing that looks exactly like a firewall grommet. Jam your lubed up coat hanger into a spot that doesn't have wires running through it, and keep pushing until you feel it pop through into the driver's side footwell. If it comes out on the passenger side, things have already gone horribly wrong. Get inside the truck and pull through as much slack as you need. Cover the slits you've made with some sealant to keep the water out. Here's the view from the inside.
If you're going to use the same switch that you have previously removed, that's too easy. Just connect everything back into the right place. If you're using a third party switch like I did, colors are probably not going to match up. Baja Designs didn't make things easy by not providing a wiring diagram and using only red and red/black wires. Drink as many beers as necessary until you figure out what connects to what. Black = ground, that much was easy enough.
Remember the two wires that were in the same terminal before you cut the switch off? I taped those together after the 5th time getting confused. From left to right here I have fuse, ground, lights. Since Baja Designs used the same color for fuse and the lights, I pulled on the wires from the engine compartment to figure out which was which and put tape on the lights/ accessory wire so I wouln't lose it again. I won't admit to how long it took me to think of that idea. For your standard OEM switch the connections you need to make are GREEN= FUSE, RED1= RELAY/ ACCESSORIES RED2= DASH LIGHT CIRCUIT (I didn't do this, but is needed if you want new switch to light up when all other dash lights are on. If you need to know how to find that wire, I'm not your guy) BLACK= GROUND.
Once you have soldered, tapped, taped and/or whatever else is your preferred technique to connect everything to the new switch, test it out. You're probably like me and not totally confident in your electrical knowledge if you are still reading this as a guide, so before you get any further you might want to check your guesswork. Hit the switch and pray that nothing catches on fire. No fire and lights turn on? You probably haven't @#$%ed anything up yet, good job! Celebrate with another beer.
All that's left is to remove the dash panel, replace a blank switch with your new one, and clean up your wiring. First step to removing the panel to the left of the steering wheel is to take this kick plate thing off. Yank the hell out of it until it pops off.
Next you need to look for is a little plastic nut that you can't see in this crappy picture but it's circled. It will come off by hand. The other thing I've circled is a bolt that I can't remember 100% if I removed, possibly due to the aforementioned celebration beers. I think you need to remove it if you want to take the section of dash all the way off, but you just need to loosen it enough to get to the back of the switch panel.
Look over to the lower right side of the steering wheel for the plastic window that's hiding another bolt. Pop the window open with a trim piece removal tool or a screwdriver if you DGAF. I found the slot on top of the window to be the easiest, as the little window's hinge is on the bottom. Remove the bolt.
Now you should be able to loosen the panel enough to feed your wiring up behind it and reconnect your switch and replace the blank with your new faceplate. Mine doesn't really sit flush, need to do some trimming around the opening for it to fit perfectly. But for now, it gets the job done. Didn't take pictures of that whole process but if you've made it this far, you can figure it out. Put everything back together in reverse order.
Again, I am obviously not an expert by any means, but hopefully this comes up if someone who needs help with this actually uses the search function.
Last edited:
Next time I'll rig it up to test before running wire.
