LED Pod Lighting question...

[zacker]

I have a 2012 GMC Sierra 2500HD and am trying to add some lights under the rear bumper to use as Reverse Lights. I had some cheap-o little lights I bought from Walmart back in about 2010 for another truck i had and they worked great until they just totally rotted away.

So I looked for more of these lights or something about the same but it seems now that everything is LED so... I bought two little square 18 Watt pod lights off Amazon, hooked them up the same way my old lights were hooked up, ( just connected the hot wires into the hot wire going to my stock reverse lamps and hooked the ground wires into the stock lights ground wire.)

I put the truck into reverse and "POP" I blew the fuse.

so I put a slightly bigger fuse in and tried it again and blew that one too.

I went up to a 20 amp fuse and blew that as well before deciding not to push my luck any longer.

After doing some snooping on line I think now, I have to hook these up to a relay and take power straight off the battery to make these work.

Has anyone had this issue when hooking up LED's to use as external lighting?

I dont want to use an on / off switch because I dont want to have to remember to switch them on and off when I put the truck into reverse.

Id rather they come on and go off when I hit reverse. But the thought of having to run wires from the battery to the back of the truck is turning me off... I have a bum knee and am not looking forward to crawling around under the truck to run the wires.

 

Anyone know of any regular old style lights i can use that will wire into my system like the ones i had? maybe 2 - 3" round or square? that are water proof?

Thanks!

 

these are the LED lights I got off amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00T62RK1U/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[sdeeter19555]

Are you sure you have them wired correctly? What you indicate is a direct short...LEDS pull so little juice, I doubt they would pop the regular fuse let alone a 20A. FWIW, I'm tied into the trailer/5th wheel harness for my back up lights, which are 55 watt halogen...

 

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[zacker]

Are you sure you have them wired correctly? What you indicate is a direct short...LEDS pull so little juice, I doubt they would pop the regular fuse let alone a 20A. FWIW, I'm tied into the trailer/5th wheel harness for my back up lights, which are 55 watt halogen...

 

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Someone else mentioned this too. I had 2 small, regular, non LED lights on it before but the rotted out... They were also wired into the trailer lighting harness, i had just used the same wiring for these and they blew the fuse. then I wired then directly into the wires for the reverse lights thinking the old wireing was bad, and still they blew the fuse. So when looking around on line i came across something that said the LEDS need to pull power directly from the battery... and in order to have them work with the reverse lights, i need to wire them to a relay thats wired to the Stock reverse lights so when they come on they power the relay to open and then the lights can get their 12 volts from the battery. I thought LEDS were drew less power to operate as well... But it looks like all the LED's I see come with relays... Maybe the lights themselves are duds?

[sdeeter19555]

Any LED I have seen pull less than a single amp...if you know they are wired correctly, then I would isolate each light and see if one is shorted out internally either with a VOM or by momentarily hooking each one to a power source.

 

 

 

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[TroyDairy]

LED lights have to be wire polarity (right term?) They have a specific + and -. Unhook and tough to a battery and see if you just wored them backward. Or yeah you may have a bad light.