So the other day I was out driving in the dark and I realized my reverse lights were FAR too weak to see the road at night. I needed a remedy.
A friend of mine heard me say this and said "well I jsut took two lights off my truck, one is broken, but if you can figure out how to mount it, it's yours."
So I figured, no worries.
First I needed to figure out how to make a bracket giving that a) I'm not a welder b)finding the exact parts you want here is not a matter of going to the right stores, it's always about scrounging and creativity. We do have stores, not many but some, but they are distant, or they don't have what you need, or both. With stores here it is always, "I need X... but I could also get by with modifying Y and Z together." Or you could wait and have stuff shipped from overseas. The tinkerer is the person who gets things working, even if it's not always pretty. In a way I take pride in the ugliness of some of my solutions.
So in the hardware rather limited supplies I found a galvanized elbow joint, 2 hose clamps, and a bolt w/nuts.
I then proceeded down to a field of junk with a friend who had a pipe cutter, and cut a length of pipe, brought it up, viced it, and then ran a manual threader on it to thread one end into the elbow joint. My other option was a $10.00 brass threaded pipe. This new option cost me 33 cents!
THEN I proceeded to mount the entire thing through the spare tire mount I have on the back of my truck, through a lug nut hole... so it's removable.
Then I ripped some cabling out of the back room where we keep piles of old electronic equipment, and spliced it off of my reverse tail light.
So now, when I put it in reverse, I can SEE the road.
Total cost to me $3.57
but it took me 3 hours to get all the parts together to make the bracket, and install it all, and a little bit of walking around to find all the right places. Sometimes tinkering is a blast, other times it's not, but one thing is for sure, it's always necessary.
Had I known how to weld, it would have taken me about 30 minutes and cost $0.00 but it wouldn't be removable!
