12 Pin Plugs for CT's and Caravans

The lights are fitted in the bumper because of the rear mounted spare tyre
It has nothing to do with height
It is to do with the viewing angles and the wheel blocking them.
I had to fit bumper lights in my 100 ser when I fitted a Kaymar wheel carrier

See Prados and other vehicles with them mounted in the rear pillars

100 ser tail lights are the same height as Patrols.

A LARGE 7 pin setup will take more current than a piddly little 7 or 12 pin setup

Far better to have a 7 pin large and an Anderson plug for Auxilaries.

My new van had a 12 pin and I biffed it and put the above in.

Vince, I think the reason the tail lights are blanked out is more to do with the angle they can be viewed at from side to side. Because the Patrol has a rear-mounted spare tyre, it is not possible to see the driver's side tail light assembly (ie: the one that is now blank), from a certain angle if you are standing on the passenger's side. Probably the same thing for the opposite side too, but wouldn't be quite as bad, due to the spare tyre being on the driver's side.

Because of this, Nissan had to make special provision by altering the corner bumper bar/s so that they could fit tail/indicator lights which COULD be seen from side angles.

The silly thing is that they (Nissan) decided to save a few cents by making the original tail lights into "blanks" instead of still providing the original lights (which you can buy on ebay and retro-fit).

Take a look at a Toyota Prado, which has the same rear set-up to a Patrol. Toyota have left the original tail lights in place, but have had to also add the lower-mounted bumper bar lights to conform with our ADRs.

I agree with your comments about the 12 pin plugs. I have one on the Ultimate and only use a couple of the larger pins (extra earth plus cable to charge aux batteries.

Roachie

Graham....SNAP.... hahaha you beat by a minute because i type too much and too slow....hahaha

....and me too

Hi All

The Auto Sparky told me today that number 9 pin is used for 6mm cable direct to van fridge, and number 10 pin was the large earth, the Anderson Plug goes direct to the vans batteries, he also put in an Ignition Switch Isolator.

Thanks All for your input.

Well my van came with a 6mm wire to supply both the fridge and the batteries HAHAHAHAHA

The van wire from the fridge to the fuse is 6 B & S.??????

So I rewired the fridge and the batteries with 8 B & S to the fridge through 1 Anderson plug all the way from the Aux battery.

They also had a piddly little normal car fuse with about 6mm wire in the middle of this wiring
It now has a 5 AG ex stereo Fuse with the large wires straight in to it.

The batteries I wired with 6 B & S through a 2nd Anderson plug and now it all works fine.
The original tiny wire now just charges the breaksafe when travelling.

Cant beat too much size when wiring that far.

Rest of stuff is through a large 7 pin.

To all, I agree you are properly right on the angle BUT answer this, I fitted a style sided Ute tray to one of my last 4x4 so I could keep the tray (NO SPARE on the back of a ute), it was off a Toyota dyna, I had to fit a step/bar with lights to lower them so the NSW RTA approved engineer would approve it & was told it was due to the height of the lights. It did not have any lift kit it was stock std, just one of our work hacks (& only went to the engineer as vehicle had a engine change)

Gidday

if the NSW examiners are like some of those in WA he was probably just making it up as he went along! There seem to be Monday rules, Friday rules, I have had a bad day so I will event some new rules ... and in one case there were rafferty's rules if you had paid enough.

rules and

Cheers

Could well be different fo modded vehiclesAm quoting why it was done to new vehicles.

Mods are another can of worms.

With the 12 pin, and depending on what you want to run, you can double up 4 of the pins...2 for pos , 2 for neg and heating issues should disappear !!

The big pins in the 12 pin plug are rated to 35A, so most charging duties won't get that high.....but doubled up you have 70A !!!!! more than a standard anderson plug !!