Adding Driving Lights

[img][/img]I dont know if this would work on your motorhome, but on my gmc yukon I have a carr light wing (it is a license plate mounting bracket with ears on either side to mount lights) with 6" lights mounted on it. I have them wired through a relay to switch on with high beam. I got the lights used, but I believe they are from harbor frieght. I retrofitted yellow HID bulbs with 55 watt ballasts into them. The yellow HID light provides very good contrast in clear weather, and cut through rain like nothing else. In the past I have used KC 6" 150 watt sealed beam daylighters that also work very well, but they do not make the sealed beam anymore. The 130 watt KC lights do not work quite as well, but are good.

As mentioned, your voltage at your headlights is low. Ford has acknowledged this, but says it's OK.

The whole story.

wallynm wrote:
Should not admit this but will. The best additional driving light is a spot light on top of the motor home. In driving rain it works better than low beams or fog lights. On long roads at night like west of Socorro, NM or Clayton, NM you can use it to spot deer and other animals crossing in front of you or maybe just waiting to jump in front of you better than high beams.

Ours has a spot or flood setting. Always turn it off when I see lights in the distance.

X2 a spot light will give you the best lighting. Be sure to point it correctly and down (there should be instructions with the lights). They are great in fog, rain, and in the boonies.

I just got a pair of 18 Watt LED "Fog" lights for $18.00 (Wish.com) NOTE; Wish is a broakerage house, they do not actually sell anything, they forward the sale to a vendor who ships direct.. Some ship fast (The one I choose did) some... not so fast (I've gotten about half the stuff I ordered from them).

Most (This included) is made in china, but so far I've not had any complaints, The Fog/driving lights however are still sitting beside me I've not yet installed, HAVE tested (Man are they bright) but have not installed.

The lights they will replace are $50.00 EACH!!!

Before adding lights, I would suggest making sure that the existing headlights are operating at maximum/proper efficiency. Check that the lenses are clean, and check that the voltage at the bulbs is correct. If it's on the lowish side, putting in a nice heavy, direct connection from the battery (controlled by a relay at the bulbs) will help a good bit. This is a common modification to make on many vehicles (and is entirely legal and safe).

You can also get headlight bulbs that are brighter at the expense of lower bulb life. If you don't do much driving at night, that may be a very good tradeoff...or even if you do.

Supplementing headlights such that they're actually more effective at highway speeds is trickier than it seems at first. Often there's a tendency to illuminate the foreground more brightly, which looks nice and reassuring, but doesn't help with seeing things far enough ahead to react to them (and can indeed have the opposite effect sometimes.) Lighting appropriate for tooling around campsites or up back forest service roads at slow speeds is quite a different matter, of course.

I know my 2013 model on the F53 has the wires for driving lights and a blank plate on the dash. I assume most models are this way. Since it's an option the wiring harness is prepped to handle a plug and play. The tricky part is mounting as it would require me to cut a mounting hole in the fiberglass where they would "normally" go. But otherwise they would simply plug right in. You may want to check with the manufacturer as they may already have a kit that gets included as an option.

In CA, we don't have safety inspections but the CHP do look for obviously off highway lights that are unmasked. To get around that I saw where a guy had placed an LED light bar about an inch and a half high in between the horizontal bars of his grill.

My Winnie has a couple of places like that in the grill and I am thinking of using that location for some LED lights to use to flash to let you and truckers know it's safe to pull in when passing.

Hooking up and installing is pretty easy, personally I would use a three position switch, on-off-monentary, and a standard auto relay with a ATC or ATM fuse for protection.

The location is hard to identify, don't know what your Bounder looks like. Check and see if your manual shows one with the optional fog lights and put them in that location. It also depends on what lights you buy. Too many options to answer here.

My old Pace Arrow came with an extra wire for fog lights between battery control center and dash.
I added an on/off switch on dash, then added 30 amp cube relay in battery box. There was a fuse position on the board for the foglights. Ran new wire down to the LED lights. I mounted them near the grill area.
This position in the battery control center is hot when the ignition is on. The switch is used to turn off "daylight running" lamps when not needed.
Make sure the lights you choose are SAE rated for driving lights and not off road lamps.

Be sure to check with your local State Inspection folks of what is legal to use on the public roads...

Once setup at the camp grounds you can use what ever you want... Lights mounted on the sides up high will usually not get you into any trouble with law enforcement folks... If they are mounted on the front or rear then you might get pulled over for it even if they are not being used... Extra lights will also fail your RV unit state inspection if they are mounted...

Speaking from my off-road JEEP days haha...

Roy Ken

I need some additional lighting added to mine also. Was looking at adding some lights around the bottom. Not trying to cause trouble, but just trying to see in those occasions where we are still on the road and it is dark. We try to arrive several hours before dark, but sometimes delays happen, and we find ourselves driving at night. Need something additional to see.