In the "if anyone cares" category; I have an update. On a recent trip from our home in NC to NOLA, the direct wired tow lights on our old CRV finally went out, so this forced my hand. Doing a little quick research, went to a Harbor Freight in NOLA and found a well reviewed set of wireless lights. Not cheap, but neither is the blue ox kit to wire to the existing car's lights, so I went for it. Here's the link.
HF wireless light kit.
Initially they didn't work. Seems with a lot of new RVs like mine that have LED tail lights, the voltage is too low at the pin to activate the system correctly, plus you get errors on your dash. It needs a load resistor 7 pin adapter. I was able to get my hands on one from Amazon.
7 pin tow light adapter
Using that, they work perfectly and made it home from NOLA to NC. So while an expensive affair, I now have a set of good working, wireless taillights that I can use for any car. As I mentioned in my initial post, our toad is getting old so we just purchased a another, newer CRV but not yet set up to tow. So this works on the old and will will work on the new. The cost for the blue ox direct wire kit with diodes and fuse disconnects that I was going to buy would have been close to the same cost and it mitigates the hassle of running all the wiring, which as I found out, gets pretty beat up over time. These are super easy and much brighter than the OEM lights. Chargeable and the trip home - about 800 miles over 2 days, the battery meter still indicates a full charge. We didn't run at night however, but still, based on some of the other units I reviewed, run time is outstanding.
