I am hooking up a tail gate open light and I have it all set ecept were can I find a wire that is hot when I turn the ignition switch on. for the warning light. I have a 2006 ram 2500. I would like to use the cigarett lighter wire but I dodn't know what color the wire is and I dont want to tear the dash all apart to find what color it is. I would just tap into it as it ran across the under side of the dash. I am hooking up the light on the left side of the dash.
Thanks in advance for the help

 

if you have a multimeter or even a test light you can probe wires under the dash when ign is on and then shut it off and watch for the light to go out....test lights are all of 5bucks and you can get a cheap meter at multiple places also...

 

under the dash there's a ton of wires that can be used, if your truck is like mine there should be a green wire, and also a orange wire that can be used. (put a small inline fuse in for safety, but those are the accessory wires so when you turn to on it will go on. Multimeter is always a good idea!

 

Cig lighter wire is Pink w/yellow stripe. I believe it's a 12ga wire.

Under steering column, the main ignition wire is Pink w/white stripe and is a 10ga wire. I highly suggest using a Meter before splicing into anything just to be certain.

 

There's only two wires going to the cig lighter, hot and ground lol.

 

I agree with getting a meter out and testing the wires to find out what you need. But the ONLY time you should be probing the big ignition wires is when you are doing alarms and remote starts. If you need to power something minor then the cig lighter is the way to go or pull a wire in from the battery