Today I’m converting to rear LED turn signals AND adding in extra reverse lights in a single unit.
You can do this to virtually any car with the custom LED turn signals I’ll show you.
Auxiliary reverse lights are a real bonus as we have a dark drive during winter and the example
car only comes with one reverse light position, into which I’ll fit a reverse light LED product.
I’m going to make this conversion using these dual colour LED bulbs for cars, with both
3000 Kelvin amber and 6000 Kelvin white LEDs in a single unit. The bulbs are available in P21W
and PY21W fitting to suit a range of cars and are easy DIY fitting. The amber indicator function is
plug and play and only one extra wire to connect for the white LED function, which I’m using for
auxiliary reverse lights. On a cautionary note, you can only use the white LEDs as
extra reverse lights where the car has ice block lights at the rear. At least the indicators must
have clear lenses to allow the white light out. Let’s get to the fitting: First, you will need to
know whether you need P21W or PY21W bulb fitment - you can determine that in advance from the Osram
bulb finder (I’ll link to it in the description). Next, you’ll need to remove your rear light bulb
holders, by whatever method you do it on your car. Some just clip straight out really easily,
some cars like the C1, you have to remove the lights. Make sure you know which is the indicator
bulb. Remove it. This light set takes P21W but a fly in the ointment that i've discovered whilst
doing this job: the PY21W version of these bulbs has much brighter white LEDs than the P21W. So,
I'm going to use the PY21W in here. However, the PY21W bulb has offset pins on the base,
so what I've done is used a file to just knock one of them off (to file it down to nothing)
so that I can fit this into the position normally occupied by a P21W. Fit the LED
bulb in place of the standard bulb and then feed the extra wire out of the bulb holder next to
the connector and leave a reasonable amount of wire. What we now need to do is splice that wire
into the reverse light wire. Make sure that you correctly identify which wire is the reverse
wire. Put the car in reverse and use a test light or bell it out with a meter or consult a wiring
diagram. One method of splicing the wires together would be to use a T-Tap, but you might find you
have fine wires like here and a T-Tap really isn't suitable in this situation. They're best used on
slightly thicker wires. Use wire strippers like these to strip a length of wire without cutting
it, that's about 0.5cm or so. Then with a pick or a sewing needle or something else sharp,
split the wires so there's a hole through the middle. Strip a small length of wire that you're
going to connect to it. Twist the wires together - we don't want any stray strands and then place
it through the hole you just made. Bind the two wires together. You could put a dab of solder on
there if you really want to but follow that up with a piece of waterproof tape. Unfortunately,
I haven't got any at the moment but the best thing to use is self-amalgamating tape. Luckily
in my case this harness is going to be inside here and is going to be on the dry side. Temporarily
plug your bulb holder back in, don't forget to turn the ignition on and check that your auxiliary
reverse LEDs are working. Check that the indicator side works. This product is actually designed as a
switchback DRL and indicator unit and therefore the indicator function takes priority over the
white light function. In the case of this C1, now all I need to do to get rid of the orange
glow look and the red glow look here and get the complete ice block look on the rear lights,
is remove the orange and red filters. This red filter is for the rear fog light
so I also need to replace the standard fog light bulb with a red LED P21W. So now on my
C1 we have the full ice block look, auxiliary reverse lights and led indicators. If you got
value from this video, please consider supporting the channel and I shall see you on the next one.