Headlight Relay Rewire, Adjusting for volt drop

grimreaper

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In the middle of planning for a headlight/foglight rewire using relays. Im probably splitting hairs here. Would it be advisable to to vary the size of wires used to produce a voltage drop that is consistent at each light?

12ga wire at 6a/14v and 6 ft would drop 0.11v to the passenger headlight.
12ga at 6a/14v and 3 ft would drop .057v at driver headlight.

Using a 14ga wire on the driver side headlight would be a closer .09v drop for 3 feet or .12v drop for 4 feet.

The percentage of change in lumens is probably only a few percent. Thoughts or insight?
 

80083r

New Member
Playing dumb/devil's advocate - why not make the wire length the same for both, and just take up the slack on the way there?

I know you're not going to want to loop the wire, but a "dummy" 3ft out of the way before going to the driver's side. That way there's no math :)

Still, I like the attention to detail, but you might be just a little bit anal here :p
 

grimreaper

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I'd agree its a bit anal.

Planning to reuse the stock fuse locations to provide power to headlights with new connector/wires. New grounds controlled through relay. Stock hi beam dimmer switch ground will pilot relay.
86-hi beam 12v, tied into 87
85- hi beam ground switch
30-ground
87-hi beam
87a- Lo beam/ stock lo beam ground.

In my simple mind, the hi beam indicator should work as normal. Current should flow through the relay pin 30 to 87a with the switch acting as a back up ground. When switched, the lamp indicator should still have connectivity to the lo beam 12v and should activate.

Critiques welcome. Feel free to share.

HL Relay.jpg
 

Dan_Gyoba

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The way I read the diagram, +12V is already through a relay at the underhood fuse box, so what you need to improve is ground. (Though it wouldn't hurt to upgrade the wires from the relay to the headlight fuses, and then from the fuses to the actual lights to 10AWG.)

According to the TEWD, power goes from the battery, to the main fuseable link (white) to the underhood fuse box. There it connects to the headlight relay. From the relay, a red wire goes to each headlight fuse, and from the fuses, one red, and one red/white wire goes to each headlight. Not much room for improvement there. Ground on the other hand goes through a bunch of connectors, passes through the firewall, and goes to the combination switch.

So a simple solution is to use a single 30A relay (It's a pair of 15A fuses, so there will never be more than 30A in the circuit without blowing fuses)

Pin 30 connected to a nice solid ground
Pin 87A(NC) to both low beam grounds (R-L connected to lamp)
Pin 87(NO) to both high beam grounds (R-B connected to lamp)
Pin 85 to the (R-B connected to combination switch)
Pin 86 to the R wire between the headlight relay and the fuses, assuming that your relay is at or very near the underhood fuse box. I'd probably add a very small fuse on this line for safety.

This does change the way that the circuit works, in that the combination switch works as a slight "make before break" between the two circuits, so when you switch to high beams, or flash, there is a time while both headlight elements have power. Wiring this way will remove that functionality, since the relay is a "break before make" switch, so the low beam will lose power before the high beam receives power, and vise versa. You may perceive a slight "blink" in your lighting while switching from high beams to low beams.

Alternately, wire as above, but disconnect 87A. Instead, wire in a second low beam relay, substituting the R-L wires from the headlights and combination switch. This will keep the factory functionality (Assuming that your relays are fast enough. They won't be instantaneous, so it's not guaranteed to eliminate a blink when switching between low and high beams. (This really is being anal, but if you're worried about WIRE LENGTHS, it bears mention.)

It would probably actually be better to use a pair of high power/low voltage NPN transistor and a resistor in place of the relays, which would be much faster (delay < 1ms) and deal with the power adequately, however the semiconductor will have a nonzero resistance, though likely lower than that of the stock setup.
 

grimreaper

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I see, forgot to account for the coil resistance. Roughly 90ohms for the ones Im using. Might have been an interesting show! Thanks Jon

The stock headlight relay is connected similarly but in a positive switching manor with the load down line.

updated schematic, including integration of stock components.
HL Relay.jpg
 
Last edited:

grimreaper

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Dan_Gyoba;1945782 said:
The way I read the diagram, +12V is already through a relay at the underhood fuse box, so what you need to improve is ground. (Though it wouldn't hurt to upgrade the wires from the relay to the headlight fuses, and then from the fuses to the actual lights to 10AWG.)

According to the TEWD, power goes from the battery, to the main fuseable link (white) to the underhood fuse box. There it connects to the headlight relay. From the relay, a red wire goes to each headlight fuse, and from the fuses, one red, and one red/white wire goes to each headlight. Not much room for improvement there. Ground on the other hand goes through a bunch of connectors, passes through the firewall, and goes to the combination switch.

So a simple solution is to use a single 30A relay (It's a pair of 15A fuses, so there will never be more than 30A in the circuit without blowing fuses)

Pin 30 connected to a nice solid ground
Pin 87A(NC) to both low beam grounds (R-L connected to lamp)
Pin 87(NO) to both high beam grounds (R-B connected to lamp)
Pin 85 to the (R-B connected to combination switch)
Pin 86 to the R wire between the headlight relay and the fuses, assuming that your relay is at or very near the underhood fuse box. I'd probably add a very small fuse on this line for safety.

This does change the way that the circuit works, in that the combination switch works as a slight "make before break" between the two circuits, so when you switch to high beams, or flash, there is a time while both headlight elements have power. Wiring this way will remove that functionality, since the relay is a "break before make" switch, so the low beam will lose power before the high beam receives power, and vise versa. You may perceive a slight "blink" in your lighting while switching from high beams to low beams.

Alternately, wire as above, but disconnect 87A. Instead, wire in a second low beam relay, substituting the R-L wires from the headlights and combination switch. This will keep the factory functionality (Assuming that your relays are fast enough. They won't be instantaneous, so it's not guaranteed to eliminate a blink when switching between low and high beams. (This really is being anal, but if you're worried about WIRE LENGTHS, it bears mention.)

It would probably actually be better to use a pair of high power/low voltage NPN transistor and a resistor in place of the relays, which would be much faster (delay < 1ms) and deal with the power adequately, however the semiconductor will have a nonzero resistance, though likely lower than that of the stock setup.

My goal was/is to keep jb#2 to make use of the fuses and power distribution already in place. The harness has to be unwrapped but gives me a chance to add the additional ground for point A to the battery. Stock wire to headlights is alarmingly small. Grounding through the headlight switch just creates more drop but you have covered that above. The two relays fit perfectly in the open space next to the relay box in jb#2 also.

i had thought to use just one relay but wanted at least one light to work should a relay bite the dust. Great insight on the functionality change of the break before make. Ill have to see how it performs, especially with the flasher function. You may need a third relay to run the low/hi beams on individual relays. The lamp indicator needs power after the switch ground is opened when hi beams are turned on.

Good info!
 

jetjock

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Jul 11, 2005
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Redacted per Title 18 USC Section 798
Why so complicated? Leave stock wiring alone. Use stock headlight power to pilot new relays which will be located near lamps because that's where the (reused) sockets remain. Reduce fuse size in JB 2 accordingly. Wire new power for lamps direct from source using the removed 15 amp fuses. Done. Not as pretty but simple and no drop.
 

Poodles

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Jul 22, 2006
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jetjock;1945828 said:
Why so complicated? Leave stock wiring alone. Use stock headlight power to pilot new relays which will be located near lamps because that's where the (reused) sockets remain. Reduce fuse size in JB 2 accordingly. Wire new power for lamps direct from source using the removed 15 amp fuses. Done. Not as pretty but simple and no drop.

A million times this. Hell, you can buy a setup that's plug and play to do all this (since it's required for doing HID setups, they're readily available)
 

grimreaper

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This might help if you follow my relay wiring. There are extra tabs already built into the fuse box for the left and right headlight fuses. This can be seen in the internal layout diagram of JB no2. These can be used in conjunction with the original wires. I used these for power to the lights to keep the stock fuse locations. Connector 2D, pins 4/7 & 8/5

Something I failed to take note of is where the fog light relay trigger receives power from. The fog light relay takes power from the hi beam filament. Using the hi beam wiring to trigger a relay works fine with the fogs off. With low beams on, fog lights on, enough current flows to trigger the fog light relay but not enough to activate the hi beam relay. When the hi beams are flashed or turn on then off, the fog light relay does not deactivate. Unfortunately the hi beams will also remain on after this. The ground path through the fog light relay trigger is sufficient to hold the hi beam relay but not trigger it. Turn the fogs of and back on and the hi beams turn off.

So a fog light rewire is needed. Im still searching for a decent positive voltage feed that would allow me to keep the automatic light control and only activate with the headlights being on, preferably the low beams. Might be asking for a bit to much. Using the low beam R/L wire would work. Not sure what the wattage of the high beam indicator is but it would need to be able to deactivate the fog light relay. Any thoughts?
 

grimreaper

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Poodles and Jetjock, i believe my schematic could easily be used with out opening the harness and just running new power and grounds. I had a few circuits that needed attention due to voltage drops. ABS power feed, AM1, AM2 and the alt to JB/1 power feed all had 2-300mv drops with 5 amp loads. They should have been less than 100mv according to the math. Some knowledgeable guy shared advice to use a headlamp to test the circuits. Worked like a charm.