Rewire Headlight with Relays


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By HoLun - 19 Years Ago
OK so I rewired my 4 headlight system with relays so the lights will draw power directly from the battery, what a world of difference, its at lease 50% brighter, Its like a new car, artifical sun on wheels!

the best thing I have done with a relay so far.



If you drive your cars at night I highly recommand this.



draws about 25-28 amps according to my cheap in car amp gauge



I didnt think it will make this much difference.



and since I wired my 4 headlight system to be all on at the same time, its twice the fun.

the high beam-only bulbs has been replaced with dual filment ones.
By 57f100 - 16 Years Ago
sounds nice for the late night bbq's
By simplyconnected - 16 Years Ago
HoLun (7/20/2006)
...I didnt think it will make this much difference...

Relays are great.  It doesn't make much sense to run all those amps to a heavy duty headlight switch.  Relays make shorter and lighter headlamp wires work just fine.  Burgular alarms can use those relays too (so do cop cars).

Make your trailer wires independant by using the same relay idea.  Run a hot #10AWG wire from your battery to your trunk (fused for 30a at the batt) and take the relay signals from your tail lights.  Your flasher unit won't go faster because the added load doesn't go through your dash regardless of how many lights there are.

You can use an inverter on that power wire when not pulling a trailer, for your laptop, etc.  I carry a trouble light right out of my garage, and plug it into the inverter.  - Dave

By DANIEL TINDER - 16 Years Ago
Interesting concept. I believe the 6V headlight upgrade kits available all use way more juice, and are really only appropriate for alternator conversions. If I could get extra brightness from my 6V sealbeams (hopefully without burning them out, in case they were originally designed only for the lower amperage supplied by the switch), and without overtaxing the generator/electrical system (takes a lot of juice to operate the overdrive & lights simultaneously), then it might be worth the effort?
By rick55 - 16 Years Ago
Here in Oz we have Hella H4 conversion kits - pretty pricey - cannot run without relay, the headlight switch will start flashing (inbuilt circuit breaker gets hot, almost immediately on low and high beam. I put relays on low and high beam and increased the size of the H4 quartz iodine bulbs that came with the kit - 55W high beam - with off road 130W high beam. They were that bright I used to refer to them as retina fryers. Probably didn't need to go that big on the wattage 100W High Beam would have been fine - I was living in a rural area with lots of wildlife at night. Here in Oz kangaroos are probably like deer except they can jump about 20 feet from nowhere and you hit them and they make a heck of mess. Good lights are essential. I would recommend running the headlights through relays on all our cars as over the years corrosion and pitting of the switches and poor connections can affect the output of the headlights dramatically - particularly on 6Volt applications.