Peterson Great White LED Mini Utility Light - 1 Diode - Black Housing - Clear Lens

Video Transcript for Peterson Great White LED Mini Utility Light Review and Installation

Hi there, safety-conscious haulers. Today we're going to be taking a look at Peterson's surface mount led light for your license plate. We've gone ahead and turned out the lights so you can see what it would look like at night. And our license plate light is clearly illuminated so people behind us will be able to see it. And this is especially important to ensure that you don't get pulled over, as this is required in most states or else you could receive a citation. This is what our license plate light is going to look like when it's installed.

It's a very small, low-profile flush-mount license plate light, so it's going to be great on just about any trailer. The small size of it is really nice because you can add it into a lot of different locations where maybe you couldn't fit other ones. You can see here we've got multiple lights here on this back section, so we are kind of limited on the size that we could fit here.I also like that it's so small and flush-mount, if this is a work trailer, things like that, some of the larger ones, you have the opportunity to accidentally bump it and break the light. Where this is being nice and flush mount, the chances of you hitting it and damaging the light are greatly minimized. It uses one ultra-bright white led to illuminate your license plate light, and this will keep you DOT compliant in all states.

To help you determine where it's going to fit on your trailer, the holes are two inches apart, so two inch from center to center. The light measures three inches wide by 1 1/16 inch tall, and it protrudes out about 5/8 of an inch since it is a surface mount light.You can see here why we're going to be replacing our old license plate light. It's filled up with water, it's broke off, and it's just not functioning like we need it to. So we can go ahead and disconnect our old one. Now, depending on your old one, it may be hardwired in or it may have a connector.

The one we have here does have a connector that holds it on, so we're going to disconnect it, and then we're going to take out our new light. Now, our new light doesn't come with a connector attachment on the back, so we are going to have to replace this so we can hard-wire it. So what we're going to be doing is we want to make sure we've got it pulled all the way out if we can. If you have more accessibility, then it's not a big deal, but if yours is in a channel like this, we need as much as possible to work with. And since we have such short wires there, we are going to be cutting it as close to the connector as possible.Now, we did pull the light out next to the side here so we could access the wires behind it, because the hole here that our wires pass through is too small to fit any butt connectors through.

So we can't wire it on this side and then pass those back through. Another thing that I noticed when I slid the wires through for the light to wire it up, is that the hole is so small that the light will not sit flush against the trailer. So we are going to remove the grommet and make the hole a little bit larger, so that way our light can sit flush. Now, depending on the size of the hole on yours, you may not need to enlarge it, but we're going to use a 7/16 drill bit to ensure that our wires can pass through.And now we can pass our wires through and you can see here that it sits nice and flush up against the trailer, which is what we're looking for. We're going to go ahead and mount it up now, now that we've got everything passed through. The hardware that it comes with is these two screws here, and these are really for if you've got plastic inserts for it to thread into or a different type of material, these will work great. Another option you have to get it mounted, rather than using the self-tappers, you could just hold it up here, drill out the holes and then use nut and bolt. I've gone ahead and mounted it that way so you could see what it would look like. This way is going to be a little bit more secure and you can find better hardware that will sit down in the holes better than with the self-tappers.We can now strip back both the wires that come on the back of our light, and if we had to cut the old wires we'll want to strip back our old wires. We'll then use a heat shrink butt connector to attach the wires. If you need any shrink butt connectors, you can get those at etrailer.com here. We're then going to wire the wires. Now, they are both black but it does matter which one goes where. If you are looking at the back of your light, the one that is on the right is going to be your positive wire. Nowhere on it is it labeled, but that is going to be your positive. So we're going to take that one and we're going to crimp on a butt connector to it, and then we're going to hook that to our positive wireWe're then going to hook up our ground, which is the other black wire coming off of the light. And you could either butt connector this, like we are here, to your existing ground wire that you have on the trailer, or you could just put a ring terminal on it and use a self-tapper to run it into the frame. We're going to be hooking ours back up to the existing ground. We chose the heat shrink because once we seal them down with our heat gun here, it will keep out any dirt, debris, and moisture, ensuring a long-lasting connectionNow, before we put our lights in back in and everything, it's a good opportunity now just to test it out to make sure it's all working. You can do this by plugging your trailer into your truck and turning your tail lights on, or by using a tester. We're using a tester, we've got them on, and we can see it's working properly, so we're going to go ahead and button up the rest of the install there, cleaning that tail light and wiring back up. With everything back in place, we're all set.