Muscleford

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Just got off the phone with Putco. The tailgate lightbar for the 2019 and later is not out yet. They are hoping for the beginning of winter. Sounds like something I can ask Santa for.
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D Fresh

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Just got off the phone with Putco. The tailgate lightbar for the 2019 and later is not out yet. They are hoping for the beginning of winter. Sounds like something I can ask Santa for.
Betcha they told @Stevie Gee that last August. ;)
 

Stevie Gee

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Just got off the phone with Putco. The tailgate lightbar for the 2019 and later is not out yet. They are hoping for the beginning of winter. Sounds like something I can ask Santa for.
Thanks for the follow-up..I hadn't had a chance to call them again!??
 

Stevie Gee

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NoCoRanger

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Installed a Putco Lightbar under the tailgate. I attached the pinout diagrams for your use. The turns, reverse, hazards and brake work as advertised, no trailer detection warnings it syncs perfectly with the other lights. The only "issue" ( for some) I ran into was the running lights, they look better without the running light especially at night, it looks tacky IMO. Like a good dude, I tried to get the running light working for everyone else :) and alas I can't get the running lights to work like they're supposed to; with the running lights hotwired, I get both turn signals flashing( I tried and since I don’t really want running lights, I didn’t go any further)Also there is an issue with the Pinout diagrams from Ford. Big Suprise? No! I encountered the same in my 2018 F150 Raptor. Good news is that even though the colors on the pinouts are different, the titles are correct meaning that brake is brake and ground is ground, don't follow the colors. Also pin #9 on the RH tail is missing making it a mirror image of the LH tail and both sides have the same exact colors. I tried a bunch of combinations with the running lights even going to the side markers, problem with that is, you lose your brake signals. So to summarize, Light bar installed and mounted, left, right signal, brake, reverse, hazards with lights on and off work correctly with the exception of the running light. It looks very neat and complete to me, exactly what my expectations were. Thanks to @Neil S and a good guy over at the F150 forum for contributing to this for the dry run.
Install it directly to your taillights, only thing that goes to the 7 pin is the ground and reverse if you please, mine is on the driver tail.
Driver tail- Use Putco brown wire to red wire
Driver tail- Use Putco yellow wire to grey wire
Driver tail- Use Putco white wire to blue wire
Passenger tail- Use Putco green wire to Grey Wire
Ground to your 7 pin and cut the 12V wire 3 inches from the box and connect the other end to the 12V bed power, look under the bed/drivers side, there's a thread here about adding a 12V option to your bed, it is the same plug, the hot wire is the one that has a stripe on it, I can't remember the colors.
Had to slightly mod license plate and clearance is minimal between the mounting surface of the bar and the tailgate. I ziptied everything under the rear bumper. Again, very clean install, can’t see any wires and hardwired into taillights. Hope this helps if not many of you, at least one of you!
Thank you @mURmECH for this detailed writeup and specially the pinout diagrams.
I wired a lightbar from Amazon (see link below) using this info and it works great with no issues with the reverse camera guides or sensors.
All wiring, including the backup light, is wired to the driver side taillight, except the right turn signal, which of course is wired to the passenger side taillight.
My lightbar is mounted on the tailgate with the wiring under and behind the bumper.
All the lightbar functions work except the running light.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FWG1MCN
 


NoCoRanger

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Thank you @mURmECH for this detailed writeup and specially the pinout diagrams.
I wired a lightbar from Amazon (see link below) using this info and it works great with no issues with the reverse camera guides or sensors.
All wiring, including the backup light, is wired to the driver side taillight, except the right turn signal, which of course is wired to the passenger side taillight.
My lightbar is mounted on the tailgate with the wiring under and behind the bumper.
All the lightbar functions work except the running light.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FWG1MCN
 

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TRD-2-Tremor

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Attached a video of the tailbar in action!!

UPDATE: disregard! I re-read your first post and saw it was pin 5 on the diagram. It’s the blue wire for me.

Do you recall what color wire was used for the passenger reverse light?
I have a 2021 Ranger tremor. I’m installing the VLED reverse light bar.
 
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mURmECH

mURmECH

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UPDATE: I re-read your post and saw that you found the pin. Good work, does it all work like you wanted to? How about the running lights? Like I said, I prefer them without running lights.


Nice, I like the Tremors, let’s switch? Lol.
I wonder if anyone ever found out how to transfer the upfitter switches to a non Tremor.
Post a link of the lightbar in action when you’re done!
So you can use pin 5 on both sides, if that doesn’t make sense to you, let me know.
I need to look at this vled, never heard of it.
 
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Big Blue

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Attached a video of the tailbar in action!!

What you using as the brake lights is actually the taillight connection.

What is confusing people is that the light bar is setup to plug into the trailer socket. But, we all know what happens when we do this, the truck thinks we have a trailer attached and gives us a bunch of warnings and disables stuff.

Trailer lights are wired different than our taillights. Lets ignore backup lights for now. Trailer lights have basically two bulbs/filements on each side, one for tailights and one for stop/turn. Our truck taillights have three bulbs/filements per side. One for taillights, one for stop and one for turn. For you trailer/light bar to know what to do it needs a module to tell it how to handle the dual use of the stop/turn filements. Our trucks have a built in module to do this, but again we know what else it does.

To wire the light bar into the tailight assembly to bypass the on board module, we need to use a aftermarket module to convert the signals. This is basically the same module that was required, you may remember, to wire trailers up to "foreign" cars. The rest of the world has had amber rear turns for some time now.

As far as backup lights go they will always need to be wired separately.

As long as the flat-4 is still a light trailer wiring standard we will still have this issue. The extra module does provide isolation between the light bar and the trucks lighting circuits, which is a good thing.

Hopefully this explains the reason for the issues everyone is having hooking up light bars. Sorry for the long winded post, but I’ve seen these same questions popping up every so often.
 

Muscleford

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Spoke to Putco yesterday regarding their Blade Tailgate Light Bar for the generation 5 Ranger. It is expected to be released in 4 - 6 weeks. This one will address the issues of compatibility with our trucks electronics. I am looking forward to its release.
 

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Spoke to Putco yesterday regarding their Blade Tailgate Light Bar for the generation 5 Ranger. It is expected to be released in 4 - 6 weeks. This one will address the issues of compatibility with our trucks electronics. I am looking forward to its release.
Thanks for the update…I’ve been calling/talking/emailing with them since March 2019 on this!??
 

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As I have already wired in a 2>3 wire adapter with diodes for towing this would be easy to hook up, but I really like the 2021 XLT rear LED's and don't need anything to detract from them.
 

samayeam

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OP, thanks for the schematics, I needed them for tow wiring and the 2>3 converter, huge help, cudo's!
Did you install wiring so that your ranger can be flat towed?
I tried to do that and I get the center mount stop light flashing with the left turn signal when I copied the wiring that the guy did on etrailer video for the harness and a 2021 ranger. Granted, I had a cap installed after I did the wiring but before hooking the ranger up to the tow vehicle to check function.
 

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Did you install wiring so that your ranger can be flat towed?
I tried to do that and I get the center mount stop light flashing with the left turn signal when I copied the wiring that the guy did on etrailer video for the harness and a 2021 ranger. Granted, I had a cap installed after I did the wiring but before hooking the ranger up to the tow vehicle to check function.
Yes flat tow. Installed a 7-pin in the grill and ran it back to the drivers side tail light housing, installed 2>1 diodes, spliced, soldered, & heat shrank the connections. Works perfectly so far, also added a tow vehicle battery charger powered by the hot on the 7-pin, used the (not needed) brake controller wire for the 'tow brakes on' sensor lead. If your 3rd brake light is flashing fast with the blinker then you got a wire incorrectly connected somewhere. I did not add that circuit in as it just wasn't needed for towing.
 

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ranger tailgate light wiring .jpg


Here's how I wired mine up to get both a running light and brake lights working. I used diodes inline with the turn and brake connection on the right / passenger side. All connection were made on the taillight side of the plug. I figure that the short harness would be easier to replace if something catastrophic happened as opposed to the main harness on the truck frame.

In case you didn't know, the brake light function is trigered by a constant +12v on either the left(yellow) or right(green) turn signal wire on these tailgate lights. Pulsing the +12v will allow for the flashing of the blinker function.

Ignore the wire colors in the image as I created those based off various diagrams and posts I had dug up and aren't totally correct. The actual wire colors I found and used are below:

Left/drivers plug
Pin 1 - Ground - Black
Pin 3 -Running light- Black with white
Pin 4 - Turn Lt - Grey
Pin 5 - Reverse - Light blue

Passenger/Right
Pin 2 - Stop - Red
Pin 4 - Turn Rt - Grey


The diodes I got are these:
15amp Diode Axial Schottky Blocking Diodes
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NS63XJH?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
Sponsored

 
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