RV Boondocking Project - DIY Installation for a Reverse Light

One of the most difficult tasks when boondocking is backing your RV into a suitable area. This can be made even more challenging if you don't have reverse lights on your RV and it's starting to get dark. In many cases, In our case, we usually don't reach our destination until it's gotten pretty late in the day. Without decent back-up lights, you could risk serious damage to your RV.

RW, Jr.'s RV didn't have any reverse lights and it really made it difficult to back-up when there wasn't much daylight left. To remedy this problem, I installed an LED spotlight on the spare tire carrier on RW, Jr.'s RV. If we wind up getting set up late in the evening, we don't have a problem because of a lack of daylight.

.The main obstacle was making a mounting bracket for the light. Replacing the existing taillights with ones that incorporated reverse lights was a pretty expensive proposition and they wouldn't have provided very much additional light. Standard reverse lights aren't very bright and wouldn't be a lot of real help when it gets dark.

I used an old aluminum bracket and a piece of 1/2" electrical conduit that was in my junk pile to fabricate a mounting bracket. It only required a couple of holes to be drilled in the spare tire mounting bracket to attach the light. I mounted it in a centered position that enabled the light to be used to its maximum advantage. This gave the maximum amount of light coverage.  

The light was wired directly into the trailer wiring harness to the reverse light wire which hadn't been hooked up. Now RW, Jr has a spotlight that works any time he is backing up his RV. He can also see me when I'm guiding him into place if it's dark. I used a  10 watt 12 volt  DC LED Floodlight for the reverse light. It's water-proof and puts out a lot of light.

Got boondocking light?

Staying above the water line!

Riverwalker