I ordered PIAA 520 driving lights to mount to my brush guard and am looking for advice on installation from anyone that has experience. The mounting is the easy part but the wiring...I'm not that electronically inclined. The generic wiring diagram PIAA sent with the instructions isn't that much help for me as it doesn't tell me specifically which wires to splice in to on the X for power that only operates when my lights are on the brights setting. Can anyone give me some clues to follow? (Other than paying someone else to do it for me...i'de like to be able to figure it out.)

I've searched this forum and didn't find this discussed before but if it was feel free to give me the link for the post instead of re-hashing the topic.

Thanks!

Well, I did it anyway despite having to figure it out myself. Here's what I ended up doing in case anyone else is thinking of doing the same mod.

First off I used this thread to find access to manuals and wiring diagrams:

http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=720104

The two challenges I found were finding a way for the wires in to the truck from the engine compartment and figuring out what wire to splice in to so that power is only available to the PIAA driving lights if the stock brights are engaged.

For getting wires in to the truck from the engine compartment on the drivers side there is a small vacuum tube that slightly lower and to the left of the main wiring harness (that is too packed to fit any more wires in to.) I popped the rubber plug out of the hole so that the vacuum tube could move in and out of the driver compartment with a little play and found that there was enough room for the few wires that I needed to run in to the truck for the switch and the switch power. The switch power wire is a single open ended wire so I taped it to the vacuum tube and used the little bit of play availabe to pull the wire end in to the drivers compartment. The switch provided by PIAA is too big to fit through the available vacuum hose hole so I cut the wires to the switch, fed them through the hole, and then re-spliced them to the switch on the inside. The downside to the hole and method I used is that technically you are supposed to run any wires that are going through the firewall in to the truck through a rubber grommet. I have the switch power wire going outside the rubber grommet/plug used for the vacuum tube and may go back and change that later (though I'm not really sure why this is necessary it's noted in the PIAA instructions.) As best as I could tell an alternative to the method I used would be to drill a new hole in to the driver compartment from the engine compartment but that seemed like it would be difficult given the room you have to manuever.

To wire the switch power so that it only has power if the truck brights are on I decided to start at the current light switch end in the steering column. I removed the top plastic top cover from the steering column and using the wiring diagram to track the appropriate wire coming from the light switch. I spliced the wrong wire the first time (cut the fog light switch instead of the brights) so had to re-splice those wires. Got it right the second time - and spliced the red wire with the green stripe coming out of the top wiring harness with the PIAA switch power.

After that it's pretty easy. The main power wires and ground go directly to the battery terminal, tighten the loose wires down out of the way.

I'm temporarily using the PIAA provided switch but I would like a Nissan switch that plugs in to the empty dash slot (just has a plug in it currently) that's next to the stock security blinker. Can anyone point me to a site to order a switch that plugs right in to that slot? I've done some googling but haven't found one yet.

Next up - installation of the K&N FIPK air intake that arrived today. :)

I found the in-dash switch I was looking for. If anyone else needed one here's the link:

http://www.4x4parts.com/public_html/shop/index.php3?page=shop/flypage&product_id=511&category_id=c3830ad1d8bfc133c3638c3a3f3ee36f&ps_session=86bcd05702d18f1243c43636816d6756