Tailight Question

[Ken Ford]

Hi!

I just received replacement tailights from Scamp, the "new" rectangular style with back up lights built-in. They are for replacing the older, square tailights (circa late 1970s?) which do not have back up lights. Since I do not have the wiring for using back up lights and don't really want them anyway, I was considering wiring-in both lamps as stop lights/turn signals, to make the Scamp more visible from behind, especially during daylight hours. I know that I have to replace the #1156 (one-filament back-up lamp) with a #1157 (two-filaments running/brake lamp). Since I am also going to replace all four marker lights, I thought I would cut out the old red marker lenses and attach them from the inside, in front of the square, clear-plastic back-up lamp window. I presume I should tie both white ground wires together and tie together both positive wires from the bulbs when wiring into the trailer harness. Is this workable? Am I missing anything? Thanks!

[Frederick L. Simson]

The two sockets are different, so you would have to replace the Back-up lamp's socket as well as the bulb. It sounds like a lot of effort to me. If the back-up bulb's filament is as bright as the Brake/Turn filament (which I do not know ), I would just color in the clear part and short the hot side of the back-up lamp to the hot side of the brake/turn lamp.

Otherwise, I would just ignore the back-up lamp altogether.

However, I chose to activate my back-up lights as back-up lights.

[Brian B-P]

I like Fred's idea. An additional benefit to the simpler configuation (aside from the noble goal of saving effort) is that when your lights go from running to brake or turn, they would have more lit area (in addition to being brighter); this is a more distinct change, and thus to me would be more noticeable.

[Darwin Maring]

I installed LEDs inside mine and put an additional red LED in the back-up portion and hot wired it to the regular running lights.

It would be far less expensive to send the Scamp lights back, go to Tractor Supply and purchase a new set of LED lights.

[Alan #1119]

I replaced the backup light socket with a pig tail system I purchased at U-Haul and the lense with clear with an all red lense. This is on a Casita with the double lense tail light.

[Ken Ford]

Thanks. I really appreciate your comments.