First, big hat tip to bilinvic Retrofits for originally posting this install (thread here). I liked the look and it sounded like a pretty straightforward install. It was.

Once again, the lights are made by Morimoto and can be purchased from The Retrofit Source for $75. The biggest problem about this install are the brackets supplied with the lights. For whatever reason, they weren't designed to be mounted in a completely horizontal position:


My solution was to take my Dremmel and round off the top enough to give the bracket enough clearance to mount horizontally. Not too big a deal. As for mounting to the bumper, I followed Bill's lead and utilized an existing bolt on the underside of the bumper:


This does require you to drill a hole through the supplied bracket in order to pass the bumper bolt back through it. I think the hole required is about 3/8", maybe a tad larger. The last thing to do is to run the wiring loom provided with the kit. The connections between the lights and the loom are nice quality, although the last 2' or so are exposed wire (the supplied inline fuse is also in this stretch.

For routing the wires, I passed the outermost connection through the square shaped cross member of the trailer hitch. Once the lights are connected to the loom, the last step is just to tap into the reverse lamp on either side. Since I have wiring & a switch for my LED bedlights on my driver's side, I opted to run these reverse lights to the passenger side reverse lamp. For my 2013 truck, the middle lamp in the tail lights is the reverse light. Here are the wires:

The white/blue wire is your positive and the black is your ground. I used a pair of terminal splice taps like these from Superbrightleds. Everything worked the first time. Don't know how well this will work but here's a rough before & after:

Before:


After:

 

do you have a finished install pic from the outside?
i'm interested in doing something similar.

 

Here's a crappy iPhone photo:


Check out BillinVic's original post for some better photos (here's the link). He's got some real nice photos of the installed lights. I decided to focus more on the install side of things with my photos so that folks would have a more complete record of the whole install.

Good luck! It's a great little project.

Steve

 

Now I can see when backing up. Installed them on the outside bolts and wired them to the 7pin connector. Have the plasma Putco cree' on order for the 921 back up bulbs so they will match when in reverse.

 

Nice! Congrats!

 

Looking good...I just want to put a note out there that if you try to do this install with some basic halogen fog lamps or high power off road LED lamps you should really power them through a relay. This method works okay for these lights because of the low current draw; but you should be careful not to overload the tail light circuit.

Still a nice install and write up, thanks.

 

The Putco plasma led added the finishing touch to the Morimoto x

 

I'm about to do this, thanks for the write-up.

I was going to tap the reverse light wire in the factory trailer hitch wiring, it's right there. Any reason why you went all the way to the tail lights?

Also I figured it's better to tap there because the trailer wiring is made to power a set of regular halogen taillights on a trailer, probably have tons of excess current capacity instead of sharing with your regular taillight circuit.

 

Is there any benefit to using the Morimotos over say the AuxBeam 7" ones I have on my truck? I know Morimoto makes fog light kits and some smaller light bars... couldn't find the lights you used on TRS's website though.

I'd be interested in taking a look at them and adding them to my site if this is a product people are interested in.

Shoot me a PM if you guys need pricing on the Morimoto lights, I'm a dealer for Retrofit Source.

 

i just bought them now, its on the website under drl lights. $60
https://www.theretrofitsource.com/le...l#.VwlgSKQrI2w

they look nicer than the auxbeam since they are lower profile, that was my reason.