Pollak Heavy-Duty Back-Up Alarm - 9-24 Volts - Less than 1 Amp - Adjustable Levels - 97 dB to 112 dB

Video Transcript for Pollak Heavy Duty Back Up Alarm Review and Installation

What's going on, everybody, Adam here with etrailer. Today, we're gonna be taking a look at the Pollak Back-Up Alarm. What really sets this one apart from all the others is this is gonna be adjustable, so we can adjust how loud it's gonna be. All we need to do is hook up our positive and negative wires and tie 'em in to our reverse circuit. But then on the other side, we're gonna have three different terminals. So we can go from 97 all the way up to 112, or we can stop in the middle right at 107.

So I'm gonna have Brad turn it on. So that is in the 97, but what we can do is you can take it up like this and we can make it into the 107 like that. It's a little bit louder. That is definitely a lot louder than the lowest setting. And then we can go ahead and put it up like this where it's not connected to any of them.

And this is the loudest setting. So it's really nice to be able to figure out exactly which sound's gonna be best for your environment. And all you really gotta do is just bridge these together. This is just going to create more resistance. So in the 97, it's gonna be bridging two together.

It's gonna make more resistance, making the noise quieter, and with the one in the center, it's gonna be super, super loud. And if you connect the other two, it's gonna add a little bit less resistance in the lowest setting, and that's gonna make it just right in the middle. So that's really, really nice. And that really does set this apart from all the other ones we have. This back-up alarm, like all the other ones we have, are gonna be OSHA approved.

And this one's a little bit bigger than some of the other ones we offer. Just to kinda give you a size comparison. These put out around the same amount of sound when this one's turned all the way down, but this one can get a lot louder if you turn it up, but this one doesn't at all. But it's a lot bigger than that, which I don't really mind just because it's a big truck, that's why we have this back-up alarm on there. So it really doesn't stick out a whole lot. And I do like how it has this nice little mesh cover. It's made of metal, so that's not gonna rust away over time. It is nice and clean and smooth, and it lets a lot of that sound come out. I just like the looks of this one better, even though it's bigger, it doesn't matter for me personally. We do have some other ones just like this. It's around the same size, but in between the two, I think this one looks a lot better. The mounting holes are gonna be about two inches apart from center on this side. And then to the other side it's gonna be about four and a quarter of an inch. It is gonna be about five inches wide up top, and it is gonna be about 3.1 inches tall and about 4.7 inches deep. This is gonna work with any nine to 24 volt system. So that's pretty much anything you're gonna put this thing on. And if you are wondering if it's gonna work with your vehicle, we're gonna go over how we tied it in. All you need to do is find your reverse wire. So stick around and we're gonna show you how we did it. First step is finding the reverse-light wire. So the way to do that is to have somebody go into the cab, and then what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our tester, and then just check for the wire that has the reverse circuit on. So Brad, you put it in reverse real quick All right, so that is good. So we know that is the circuit that we want. We already ran this wire. So basically what you can do is you can take the wire that runs to your reverse light. You can cut it in half and then you can take another wire and twist that together with one side, put it in here, clamp it down, and then take the other to complete the circuit again. So you have two coming off this way, one goes to here, the other one goes to where it was before, and then the other one's just coming from the body harness. So that's what we did, and you can have it right here. So now we can go ahead and start mounting it up. First, get an idea of where you want it. Ideally, it's gonna be next to all of our wires, so we don't really have to run a bunch of wires. So I'm gonna put it right about here. So I already have the drills, or the holes pre-drilled, so I'm just gonna use those. There are four different mounting holes, but I'm only gonna use two today just for showing you guys how it goes on and stuff, but you guys should definitely use all four of 'em. Want to get it nice and tight, but not too tight to crack the housing or anything like that. Then we go for the other. All right, now that it's mounted nice and solid, we can go ahead and start hooking this thing up. Once you tie in your extra wire, we are gonna need to put a ring terminal on there. So, these you can also find here at etrailer. And then you can take off the nut and some of the washers. And then we can tighten this down using a eight millimeter socket. And this is gonna be for our positive. Once that's tight, we can move on to our negative, which will also need two ring terminals on there. You can either tie this into a ground wire or just self-tap it to the frame, which is what we're gonna do. So same exact deal, remove it, put it on the negative one, put it back on, get it hand tight, tighten it up. And then I'm gonna go over here to the frame and we're gonna have a self-tapper, which we're gonna need three for this. So one for the ground, and we used two to mount it up, and you guys will need four, and then. And now we can go ahead and test it. So now you can go ahead and grab somebody, and Brad's gonna help us out. He's gonna put it in reverse and see if it works. It works! We have a lot of different back-up alarms here at etrailer besides the one we just showed you. So we laid 'em all out and we're gonna do a sound test here. So we have all of them laid out, and over here we're gonna have a little gauge. So as you can see, once I start talking real loud it goes up, and when I stop it goes back down. So this is gonna give us an idea of exactly how accurate the decibel ratings are, and see which one's the loudest. First one up on our list is gonna be the Buyers Products back-up alarm, and this one is supposed to do 102 decibels. So we got some wires ran and we're rigging this up so we can get it to work on the table here. So I'm gonna go ahead and put the wires in place, just like that. Let's see exactly how loud it actually is. All right, here goes the test. So about 96, 97 decibels, and it is a little far away, so right here it's probably gonna be around that 102 decimal mark, which is exactly what it says. So let's move on to the next. This one's gonna be a little bit louder, 107, apparently, again, Buyers Products. And we're going to connect it up. All right, test number two. So we're peaking out about 95, which is kinda the same as the other one. It does have a little bit different tone, so that might have something to do with it. And also we do have it a little farther away. But it is still within that range, in the same ballpark. And that's what we're kinda looking for here. So moving up, we're gonna go with the Pollak back-up alarm. So this one is gonna be about 107 decibels. So let's test it out and see if that's what it is. Testing. Again, kinda going around that 95 decibel range. But again, it's just an app on one of our iPads we keep here in the shop, but it still is pretty loud. But all in all, it's around the same, we're looking at maybe about eight decibels of difference from what it says and what our gauge is telling us. Now for the Custer back-up alarm. Let's go ahead and hook it up. Testing. So not as loud as some of the others that we had, about 83 is what we're getting with that. And this one's supposed to be 97, so it's within the range. And now for our Peterson back-up alarm. This is gonna be about 112 decibels, so it should be a little bit louder than the others. It's reading about 95, but that was a lot louder. I think it's because of the little projection that they have in the molding. But this one definitely seems louder, even though it is reading about the same from all of our others, but let's move on. So now we're gonna go with the Pollak, and this one's gonna have different settings, so at its highest setting it's supposed to be around 112. So let's see if it's any louder than this one. Testing. Again about 97, but this one definitely is a lot louder. So I think usually when the housing's a little bit bigger, it kinda projects that sound a little bit more and makes it a little bit louder. Out of all the ones we tested today, the one I would go with is the Pollak. So this one is my favorite just because we are gonna have adjustments on the sides for the decibel output. I added on the one 112, but we can make it go to 97 or 107. So this is gonna be adjustable and it's extremely heavy-duty. It does feel a lot more solid than some of the smaller ones. And typically these are gonna go on larger vehicles. So it being compact, isn't really a big deal for me. And if you do want a smaller one, the Buyer's Product is gonna be a nice compact little unit, and this is gonna be a little bit easier to find a place to put it. So we're gonna go ahead and turn it on one more time. Works pretty good, extremely loud, and that is pretty much it for our look at the Pollak Back-Up Safety Alarm..