I just bought this product and i am no mechanic but i dont want to pay 100 dollars for a 5 min install. Can you help me on how to install the reverse light. I have the 4 prong thing plugged in i just dont know where to go from there? Please Help!!

 

were going to need a little more details. what exaclty you bought, and what exactly you are tying to do.

if you are trying to run a reverse light off of the 4 prong trailer connector its not going to work. you need a 7 prong, and if you dont have that youll have to be splicing into the reverse wires in your tailights and running a relay and power wire from the battery.

 

if you use a relay and leave it under the truck or where water could get to. be sure to seal it some how. someone on here said wrap it in a baggie.

 

I bought the fire and ice 60 for an f150 and i have the 4 prongs. I know i am going to have to hard wire in the tail lights.. I don't know how to do that though if someone could tell me i would be great full. Thanks

 

Here is how you wire the reverse light:

Drop your tailgate. Get the proper tools and remove the two screws holding in the LEFT tail-lamp.

Pop the whole light fixture out and gently release the 2 C-clips holding onto the reverse light bulb.

I am not sure which one it is, but I first cut into one and touched the reverse wire and my F&I wire (with the key on and in reverse) and it didn't light up so I used electrical tape and taped it back together and using the process of elimination I knew it HAD to be the other wire. I cut a sliver into the insulation and touched and sure enough it lit up. Cut the sliver a little wider and wrap the F&I's wire around it nice and good and tape it off.

Pop the light back into place (careful!) and reinstall the 2 screws. Be sure to tuck up the wire so it isnt hanging!

 

When you cut the wire did you just tape the white wire over the tail light wire?
What were the tools that you had or need?

 

For the reverse lights

I used a pin to pierce the wire and made the connection to the pin. Then wrapped the whole thing in lots of electrical tape.

Still working fine after a year

 

I'd reccomend NOT using pins, pocket knives, chewing gum, etc. The "extra" wire needs to be tapped into the hot side of your reverse light circuit. Yes, you can get to it by removing your tail light assembly. There are two wires coming from the reverse light socket. One is black - your ground. The other is the lead you want. I'd recommend tapping in by stripping, cleaning, soldering, heat shrinking, then maybe taping. An easier (but somewhat less reliable) method is to use a 3M Wire Tap available at most auto parts stores.

 

how do you tap into the reverse light......i know that you have to take out th driver side tail light but then what. i don't have wire strippers what can i do? After i take the tail light off the all i have to do is attach the wire....can i just pierce the side of the wire and stick the reverse light in there and wrap it in electrical tape. Please help this is getting frustrating.

 

u dont really need wire strippers, u want to make a slice in the wire insulating so that u can see the bare wire. then wrap the reverse lead from the light bar around the wire u just sliced open. i wouldnt recommend actually cutting the reverse wire to your taillight, just do the slice thing. and assuming u dont have a heat shrink, ya, u can just wrap it in electrical tape. maybe even take a hair dryer to it so it shrinks all the tape really tight around it.

 

wtf dude, me and another guy just explained how to do this TWICE if you actually bothered reading all of the posts.

 

Thanks for the info...my fire and ice light will arrive this week!

 

Okay, so I know it is an old thread but having received mine today I thought a little advice would be good. First, remove your tailgate, I didn't and should have. Second, splicing into the reverse light is very easy and requires no real splicing or cutting. On my 2008 F150 the reverse wire was green with a lighter green stripe on it. I found this out by pulling my left tail light and seeing two wires, one a ground (black) the other the power for reverse lights (green/light green stripe). I followed this wire from the tail light to where it ran under the truck very near the hitch. I cut into the round, black plastic wire tube and pulled out the green wire with the lighter green stripe. Using a lighter, I heated the wire until the outer sheath was hot and pulled it off very easily. I then wrapped the white wire (supplied with the fire and ice kit) around the exposed copper and taped it very well with electrical tape. Works great!

 

The reverse circuit for the tail lamps really should not be used for powering the aux reverse lamps directly.

I did the test with my truck-lite backup LED, to see what the truck could do ( an experiment ) and adding a 1 A LED load to the existing reverse lamps was too much of an additional load. The 1 A additional load had the factory reverse lamps burning slightly dim, and the truck-lite LED did not come to full brightness.

At this point I stopped the experiment ( did not see what could be added ) as 1 A load would give the circuit problems.
The standard reverse lamps are 26 W ( if memory serves me correctly ) which is 52 W total, which @ 12.6 V ( my truck was off at the time, so I went on the absolute low side ) is 4.13 A draw from the factory configuration.

So the results of the experiment on my 2006 F-150 was the over driving of the circuit by 25 % was not good for the DTR sensor.

YMMV, just wanted to put this up, you might want to consider using the trailer tow 7 pin adapter; reverse circuit for adding items like this.
Else the relay and additional circuit, triggering the relay with the factory lamps.

Just be aware you could have DTR problems later .

 

Interesting, but IIRC, LEDs draw what, 0.04A? I'm sure if this was a problem those manufacturers wouldnt be putting it in their directions. I (and several thousand) have been faithfully running mine for years with no problems.

If that 4.13A is a problem, swap those out for some white 3165 LEDs. Problem solved