After I tinted the rear half of the car's greenhouse I found the OEM reversing lights to be a little inadequate at night and decided to augment them. I looked into replacing the existing bulbs but at 27.5W they are about maxed out. I can get 20W G4 lamps with a bayonet base that put out a little more light but not really significant.

So I was faced with adding lights to the rear of the car. I selected some cheap front auxiliary fog lights from the local car parts store. You know the ones. People add them under their front bumpers and drive around when it's not foggy thinking they are cool. I had to find somewhere to mount them though. Rack mounted lights came to mind but I rejected that idea as they would be far too conspicuous. Another mounting option was under the overhang on the tail gate either side of the release handle. This area would blend in nicely but I could not find any lights that were flush enough. Plus, the thought of fishing wires through the tail gate to the battery was a bit daunting. I finally settled on mounting them under the rear valance, hanging down, but when I did this I was suddenly inspired to mount them behind the valence and cut some slots for them to poke through. I was a little shocked after ten minutes hacking away with a stanly knife knife to realize that I had actually cut holes in a very expensive piece of ABS. However, the result is very good as you can see so I am rather pleased with how it worked out.

The next obstacle was wiring the buggers. I elected to use a relay as I am adding 75w off load. I planned to power this relay off the battery using the fuse supplied with the lights and switch it off the sender unit in the gear box. The first problem was finding the sensor. My Haynes manual makes no mention of any wiring for the reversing lights so I was on my own. I crawled under the car (a task made more difficult since Ilowered it 2") and found an obvious culprit on the drivers (US) side. Then I found two more candidates on the other side. God knows what all those wires are doing poking into a manual transmission like that. Anyway, its one of the two on the passenger side, the most forward one I think and it plugs into the wiring harness just behind the engine and under the air plenum thingy.

I mounted the relay on the bulkhead on the drivers side so access from the harness plug was simple. I used a "Scotch Lock" to tap into the lead that is hot only when the car is in reverse. The other is hot all the time. In the rear, I pierced a rubber plug under the car and fed the power wire into the spare wheel well. From their it was a straight shot to the transmission tunnel, center console and bulkhead. I switched this power lead in the center console with the switch provided with the lights just in case plod is reading this. When I connected the relay I was amazed to find it all worked first time.