Auxiliary backup lighting for chevy

1009 Views 4 Replies 3 Participants Last post by blazinzuk, Aug 29, 2003

toker113

Discussion Starter · Aug 28, 2003

im new to the 4x scene and live in alaska where it gets real dark in the winter and stays light all the time during summer. we are now approaching winter and ive been having a hard time backing up with the darkness this time of year. i recently purchased some tractor lights that have a positive and negative wire sticking out of it. how can i wire these into my 1990 chevy 1500 so they light up automatically when i shift into reverse? any hints or help would be greatly appreciated. thanks

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Sandman

· #2 · Aug 28, 2003

Welcome to the board. :thumb:

In the back and underneath is your rear wiring harness. On the lights that you bought, The negative wire you can mount to the frame or the body. The positive wire you can splice into the reverse light wire in the wiring harness. Depending on the power of the lights, you might want to change up to a higher fuse to handle the load. If the truck has a towing package, its already set up to handle the higher current draw. I dont know which color of wire your after so you might have to borrow a Chiltons manual or something to look it up. The library might have one that you can copy some pages off of the copier if you do not want to buy one. Hope this helps.

I do know of an offroad site that is based in Alaska. These are good guys and they are very extreme!

Alaska Offroad

Let us know how it goes. :mrgreen:

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toker113

Discussion Starter · #3 · Aug 28, 2003

the lights i bought are 55w each. do you think that i would need to upgrade my fuse? and how much? thanks

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Sandman

· #4 · Aug 28, 2003

Lets see...

110 Watts / 13.5 Volts is 8.15 Amps. Give it 10% more for turn on spikes so... You would want to get a fuse about 9 or 10 amps larger than your present fuse.

So if you have a 15 amp fuse in there, Put in a 25 amp and you should be good to go.

But now that I think of it, It might be a bad idea after all. The wiring harness might not be able to handle the extra load. The best bet would be to run your own wire and either put it on a switch or a relay that would be activated off of the reverse wire. You can ussually get light relay kits from a decent auto parts store. Instead of hooking the relay into a dash mounted switch, You can splice it into the reverse wire.

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blazinzuk

· #5 · Aug 29, 2003

If you are new to wiring I would take it to somebody who knows something about it but I would run relays it is fairly easy to do and wire them in with your reverse lights. Also in JCWhitney I have seen higher power reverse lights that will fit in your existing lights these work exccelent I have used them before and all it requires is changing a bulb :rotfl: :rotfl:

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