Bought 2 offroad lights long ago. Lost the instructions to the sands of time. Installed the lights into the grill guard. Now I’m trying to figure out how to wire them up, but so far, no dice. (Granted I’ve only been tinkering with it for 20 minutes.)
Here’s what I have: A current-interrupting switch. A long white-insulated copper wire with a “C” shaped connector on one end and nothing at all on the other end.
The long white wire, towards the C-end of it, has a plastic cylindrical casing containing a fuse.
Two weird tabs made of copper, very small, with rubber coating on the ends. Another C-connector thing, rubber insulated on one end, this one a complete circle instead of a “C.”
The switch has two copper tabs sticking out of the back of it.
The lights already each have two wires dangling from them.
What do I do? Would it help if I took a picture of all the components laid out…I can do that.
Probably some more questions are in order. Are these off road lights halogen?
Asking because you haven’t mentioned a relay, and the Hella fog lights I put on my van were halogen (think high draw). You can buy 30Amp plug in relays at an auto parts store or Radio Shack for under 10 bucks. Do you have a test meter of any kind that measures ohms? I’d like to know if the case of your lamps is electrically isolated from the bulb wiring-it sounds like it is because you mention two wires from each lamp and I doubt they’re dual filament with grounded case.
The wiring-presuming you use a relay is two circuits. First is your feed. Depending on the type of vehicle, it can be a dozen places-the closer to the battery the better. Fuse a #14 AWG wire with a 15 amp fuse and run this to one of the normally open relay contacts. From the other side of that contact, run an equal size wire to one side of one light, and then over to the same terminal on the other light. The remaining lead from each light needs to be connected to the chassis, something metallic which is grounded, or no flow, Joe.
Next is the control circuit. I’d be tempted to tag your existing parking light circuit for this. Splice into a lead which is hot when your parking lights are on, run that to one side of the switch, and then run a wire from the other side of the switch to one side of the relay coil. The other side of the relay coil will then go to ground.
In this fashion, you don’t worry about leaving your off road lights on, as the parking light buzzer would warn you to shut them off. If you wanted to get spiffy, you could include an indicator LED or lamp to show when the off road lights are on, and this may be a requirement of your state inspection code.
Holler with questions-no doubt you’ll have a few. 