Underhood light

toggle switch?

I suspect the tilt switch is part of the factory under hood light. It closes the circuit to ground when the hood is tilted up. If you can access the connection between the lamp and the switch then you could wire the ground side of the additional lights to that point and the switch will control all of the lights. I think that in the U.S. mercury switches have been replaced with pin switches. Pin switches are kind of a pain to install and adjust and energize on just a small amount of movement. The easiest (and cheapest) solution is probably to use a toggle switch and manually turn the lights on and off. Just don't forget to turn off the lights before closing the hood.

2000StreetRod said:

I suspect the tilt switch is part of the factory under hood light. It closes the circuit to ground when the hood is tilted up. If you can access the connection between the lamp and the switch then you could wire the ground side of the additional lights to that point and the switch will control all of the lights. I think that in the U.S. mercury switches have been replaced with pin switches. Pin switches are kind of a pain to install and adjust and energize on just a small amount of movement. The easiest (and cheapest) solution is probably to use a toggle switch and manually turn the lights on and off. Just don't forget to turn off the lights before closing the hood.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately there's no easy way to get inbetween the bulb and switch as far as I know. I'm hoping somebody knows of an adapter that fits in place of the bulb and adds an output for additional lights or whatever you want.

I'd rather not add a pin switch, the tilt switch for the factory light works great and as it sits right now I don't have a mess going on. All 3 lights are contained in the hood insulation.

Right now I have the positive line for the LED lights pulled out of the factory light. If need be I'll just continue to pull it out before I close the hood. Glad I used solid core wire lol

Look at this thread for some ideas...

http://www.toyota120.com/forum/showthread.php?t=26671

That's a huge difference with new lights on, share what you come up with the switch solution.