My back tint is so dark that I cannot see at night when backing up. I was thinking of getting some small cheap fog lights from Harbor Freight to hide under the rear bumper and wire them to the reverse lights. I would also put a seperate switch to control the lights when I don't want them coming on in reverse (say a well lighted parking lot where I don't want to blind anyone). Thoughts on this?

 

thats what i did. do a search in this forum for tips on how people have done it.

 

Something like this:

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=46908

 

I had the same problem years ago and I became real good with using the outside mirrors, but then again the high output reverse lights were not an option on a Mustang GT.

A friend of mine has that setup on his truck and he uses it to back his bass boat into the lake. But I am guessing that he has some air tight lights to prevent water damage from the lake. He also runs these lights off of a switch. Good luck with your project.

 

They look ok and at 55w they wont burn up any factory wiring.

 

Sweet, thanks for the advice. Is yours wired to come on exclusively with the reverse lights, or can you switch them on at any time? I just thought about if I have a switch in the cab, why in the hell do I need to wire them to the reverse lights?

 

I didn't feel like running wires so i wired it to the trailer plug reverse circuit. its a separate fused and relayed circuit that come on when i put it in reverse. the center wire on the 7 pin plug is the reverse wire.

 

I use 2 55w light.
Don't try to operate them from the stock wiring. The wire is not heavy enough to feed 110 watts plus the rest of the lamps.
Install a 30 amp auto relay at the rear and wire it to operate with the backup lamps.
Run a fused #10 lead from the battery to the relay then to the new lamps or use the trailer harness if you have that setup.
You have to put some effort into this so it gets you what you want and not cause problems.

 

But if you have the towing package then you can use that circuit. It uses a 20 amp fuse #5 and a relay #203 in the power distribution box. If i didn't have a 7 pin trailer plug then i would have done it like Bluegrass.

 

I have mine wired very similar to what Bluegrass suggested, except I added a switch on the dash that allows me to turn them on at will. Otherwise, they go on whenever the truck goes into reverse. You won't blind anyone as long as you aim them properly.

This is the only picture of the switch I can find. When I originally installed these extra back up lights 8 years ago, I also added a set of driving lights behind the front grille, which I have since removed. The switch I installed allowed me to control both. It's in the upper left corner of the picture.




I'll be honest with you, when I was younger and dumber, I once used these to flash some jerk behind me with his high beams on. He got the message, and it felt empowering at the time, but in reflection, it was a pretty damn stupid thing for me to do.