YotaTech Forums - LED Reverse / Backup lights 2nd Gen 4Runner

The stock reverse lights are not bright enough to navigate the trails with confidence in the dark. I found out the first time I took the truck on a run and had to back down a mountain at night with some really long drop offs. After about 20 minutes we made it to a turn around point but driving slow for that long isn't easy on the neck.

Here's an option for backup lights for a 2nd gen 4runner. The power taps right off the stock wiring. There's no need to add a relay or run wires. There's also not much chance it's going to get snagged off by a tree or rock. Well at least not the way I wheel. It's several times brighter than the stock reverse lights. All eight lamps put out about 300 lumens but only draw 12 watts or 1.3 amp. There should be no need to worry about popping fuses. The reverse light circuit in the 4runner is on a 10A fuse.

The bulb I ended up choosing is a MR16 12 volt 21 LED warm (slightly more yellowish) color lamp. There is a cooler (whiter) light color available but human eyes tend to have a harder time seeing blues and greens. It works on AC or DC. They have a 15 degree beam angle. I found that 15 works well for reverse lights. Some LEDs have such a wide beam angle that they spread the light all over and it's dim in the direction you want to look. It's about half as bright as a single Luxeon 3 LED but they are in a glass housing that can be easily sealed with silicone to keep the water out. I bought mine from ebay and the ebay source was www.ledwholesalers.com. The ebay auction I found had 9 LED lamps for $70 including shipping.
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...04runner/3.jpg
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...04runner/2.jpg

Run a bead of silicone where the lens edge meets the bell housing to seal the water out.
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...04runner/1.jpg

I cut a piece of vinyl gutter and drilled holes in it to hold the lamps in. The 90 degree angle of the gutter wasn't quite right so I took a propane torch and warmed the plastic until I could bend it, matching the face angle of the new lamp housing to the contour of the truck. I just shot it with silver spray paint to mask the white vinyl. The face of the lamp array is 16.0 inches wide.
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...04runner/5.jpg
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...04runner/6.jpg

I soldered the black wires in parallel to the pins on the LED lamps
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...04runner/7.jpg

I glued in the lamps with silicone
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...04runner/4.jpg

To remove the tail light assembly it's just a couple of number two phillips head screws and a wiggle to free up the housing.
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...04runner/8.jpg

For the power source I tapped directly into the reverse lights in the tailgate. A nice feature of the lamps is that they are non-polar so unlike a plain LEDs you don't have to worry about matching positive to positive and negative to negative. Just hook 'em up. Just to be safe offset your wire splices. That way if the tape or shrink tubing fails the conductors still can't touch and short out. I forgot to take a photo of the notches but it's just big enough for the wires to go through. The Ronsonol lighter fluid (Naptha) was to clean off the glue residue from the old black tape on the factory wiring.
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...04runner/9.jpg

I just used three 0.5 inch self tapping screws to screw it to the underhang of the license plate area. I put a dab of silicone on the screw heads to keep them from working loose.
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...4runner/19.jpg

I took the photos keeping the settings the same on the camera so you can get an idea of the actual light output of the stock reverse lights vs the LEDs.

The area with no lights from the truck
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...ights-2364.jpg

The area lit with the stock reverse lights
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...ights-2378.jpg

The area with the LED array
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...-Lights-23.jpg

The stock lights on the truck. (I didn't notice this until I put the image up but there is a reflection at the top of the photo of a building nearby? I'm not quite sure how that happened. I was hundreds of feet from the nearest building. Weird.)
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...ights-2372.jpg

The LED array with the stock lights on the truck
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...Array-2373.jpg

I wish I had taken more photos and measurements of the actual LED housing but hopefully this helps out with your rig. I'd like to know of your opinions and suggestions about making the setup better. One thing I'm planning on doing is adding a manual switch near the driver's seat to turn the lights on when not in reverse. Now that I have the LED reverse lights I find them even more handy than the headlights because of the even and soft light they produce.