Project Runner: Blue Sea Auxiliary Fuse Block Install

The main purpose of this modification is to have a safe place to power any accessories that I will add in the future. Having had a Painless Wiring Cirkit Boss melt on me in the past meant that it was back to the drawing board for this mod. Having followed along with other people’s build threads on www.toyota-4runner.org and www.expeditionportal.com forums, I knew that Blue Sea products were high quality.

A quick Google search of the products showed that they were pretty reasonably priced. I opted to go with the Blue Sea 5025B which is the six circuit ST Blade Fuse with cover which was right around $28.00 at www.otrattw.com.

Having seen a real nice build up on the Tacoma World Forums where the guy built a nice bracket to mount the fuse block and circuit breaker to, I decided to do something similar. I haven’t really done any metal working in the past, but just took my time on it. Home Depot had a 6″x18″ 26-guage sheet metal panel for around $10.00 that I decided to start with.

I started the way that toobluetacoma06 did on the Tacoma World Forum, with a cardboard template. Once that was set up the way that I wanted I transferred that over to the sheet metal panel. I had a cut-off wheel that I used to cut the panel sections as the template dictated. After that, it was pre-drilling some holes to mount that fuse block and circuit breaker. Once it was all cut and drilled, I used a can of the spray-on bed liner to paint / give it texture.

I found a couple of holes in the driver’s side fender that we already set up to accept bolts (had the nutserts installed). It was just a matter of finding the right bolts to go in them which required a few minutes at the hardware store. With that, I drilled the required holes in the bracket, used a few washers to mount it.