My wife has a Jeep Renegade that has her fog lights come on when her wheel is turned. This got me thinking about adding some mini light bars underneath the truck pointing diagonally off the front bumper that could be activated with an upfitter switch, but power on based on turning the wheel. Anyone ever done this or anything similar? Not even sure how to get a "hot" signal based on the wheel turning. I thought about trying it with the turn signals to power on a relay, but usually when I would "need' this would be back roads heading out to hunt---where I rarely use signals.

 

You would need something to tell it when you were turning, which the truck does not have. You could probably do something with a RaspberryPi and a potentiometer/accelerometer/etc....but, that's really unnecessarily complicated. Just get some LED pods that point where you want, and flip them on when you're out in the country.

 

I believe the "Off Road" dash display does indicate steering angle - don't know where that information originates, but there must be a sensor somewhere.

 

Offroad and Towing both have steering angle, so while there is definitely a sensor, there's no easy output. You could find that sensor, figure out what sort of readings you get from it, probably variable ohm's depending on the angle, but then you're back at not having a "brain" to tell the lights to go on and off based on the steering angle...its just a whole lot of work for not a lot of return. It would be infinitely easier to just hook up some LED pods pointed out in the weeds, and flip the switch when you need to see.

 

The sensor is built into the clockspring in the steering wheel guts.

I briefly looked into disabling the steering angle sensor on my previous Ram truck, as the stability control systems relied on it (just like Ford)