Overland Equipped Complete Auxiliary Power Kit 3rd Gen Tacoma

When it comes to powering all of your auxiliary lighting and accessories, nothing is more important than providing safe power and keeping your wiring organized. Protecting your expensive lighting from an electrical shortage (or a fire) should be a top priority!

There are many ways to accomplish this, but the go-to in the overland/off-road world is a fuse block. They provide a centralized location for all your power and ground connections and get rid of excessive loose wiring and those inconvenient in-line fuses.

Everything You Need

Overland Equipped takes this idea one step further—they’ve fabricated a custom engine mounting tray to hold a 12-circuit fuse block from Blue Sea, along with a 100A master fuse and power/ground cables to meet your custom power needs. They also make one for the 2nd Gen Tacoma.

This engine mounting tray mounts inside the Tacoma’s engine bay right next to the OEM fuse box using existing factory-tapped holes (no drilling required), making it easy to cleanly run wires to and from the panel, access fuses, and connect switches from inside the cab.

What’s Included

• Blue Seas 12 Circuit Fuse Box
• Blue Seas 100A Master Fuse
• 8 Gauge Power and Ground Wiring
• Custom Fabricated Aluminum Mounting Bracket

Find It Online

• Overland Equipped Power Kit: Check Price

Installation Overview

Installing this panel really couldn’t get much easier, Overland Equipped pre-builds the tray with the 12-circuit fuse block, 100A master fuse, and power connection wires. All that’s left to do is to mount it inside the engine bay!

First, you’ll want to disconnect the negative battery terminal by the 10mm bolt before doing anything else. This will make sure nothing shorts out or gets damaged during the wiring installation. You will also want to keep track of the power and ground wires on the panel during the install to ensure they don’t get tangled or snagged on any components.

Then, locate the small factory bolt that secures a wiring loom bracket near the oil fill cap. This is the bolt you’ll loosen to insert the forked end of the bracket into. Loosen this bolt with a 10mm socket or wrench, but do not remove it.

Mounting Power Tray

Once the bolt is loose, you can slide the auxiliary power tray bracket between the OEM bracket and the engine bay. Once installed, check to see if the two slots line up with the factory 8mm bolt locations in the engine bay. In my case, they were still a bit far off the mark. If this is the case for you, remove the forked end of the bracket and reinstall it between the OEM bracket and the washer of the bolt. This should give you more room to work with.

Once this is in place, you can start the two bolts to secure the bracket to the engine bay. The bolts should have the split washer and flat washer installed in that order over the top of the bracket. Before tightening completely, check to make sure the bracket isn’t resting on or touching the brake sensor wires in any way. These are located near the top left corner of the bracket.

Next, tighten the lower bolt the rest of the way. Once secure, tighten the two top bolts until the split washer is flat, then tighten another quarter of a turn.

Wiring

Now that the panel is installed, we can wire it up to the battery (don’t judge my battery terminals, haha). At this point, you can connect the red power cable to the positive terminal of the battery. Remove the 13mm nut and slide the ring connector over the top of the bolt and reinstall the nut on top.

Ground Wire

The ground wire can be connected in a variety of places along the driver’s side of the engine bay. I chose to use a 10mm bolt location beside the fuse box, as it was less crowded than my already used upper bolt location. You should attach this ring connector directly to a bolt, not to any hanging tabs. This will ensure the ground wire makes good contact with the metal surface of the engine bay and keep your fuse block grounded. You can then reinstall the negative terminal wire onto the battery.

Since the 100A master fuse is already wired up, all that’s left to do is flip it to the on position and begin wiring your accessories!

First Impressions

For the purpose of this install, I wired up two sets of two 5″x7” Eclipse lights from Ironman 4×4. These wiring harnesses come with a relay, unlike many other lighting options on the market, as well as an inline fuse. If you’d like to see how I wired these lights up, be on the lookout for that article shortly.

Spoiler alert – the auxiliary power kit made installing these lights a breeze, and I was able to keep my engine bay clean and organized.

The fuse block and 100A master fuse are some of the most widely used and highly recommended pieces I could find online if I were to do this on my own. Both components seem high quality and reliable.

The machined panel itself was finished very nicely and was the perfect size for the mounting location. I personally had some trouble getting the top two holes close enough to the engine bay to connect, but after readjusting the panel a few times, I got it to work.

Final Thoughts

Upon receiving the prebuilt auxiliary power kit from Overland Equipped, I was impressed with the accuracy of the machining and the overall build quality. The wiring was done with premium wire, all the connections seem to be solid, and the provided hardware was great. The power and ground wires were also the appropriate length so I didn’t have much to do to manage these cables.

I especially liked how the ground wire was long enough to accommodate almost any OEM ground location in the engine bay. For someone like me with many random accessories grounded in the typical spot, the freedom of choice was very convenient. It definitely beats trying to drill a hole in a random location!

Downsides?

The slots running next to the fuse block provide a nice place to run cables, but I found it to be very close to the fuse block itself, and my wires were almost unable to be bent to fit inside this channel.

The edges of this channel are also very sharp, and because of the tension placed on the wires, they’ve already begun to rub and wear on this edge just from the installation process. I may have used large ring connectors with excessive heat shrink, but even with a smaller connector, I fear the edges pose a threat of excessive wear or damage. I might add a strip of some material to prevent further abrasion.

All in all, I would still highly recommend this auxiliary power kit to anyone looking for a smart, reliable, and organized way to power all of your electrical accessories and switches.