Solved 1997 Explorer, white-Fog light install-

[allmyEXes]

Not too far back in time, I installed some cheap LED lights in the old fog light positions. One of the cheap LED lamps quit working.
So I had some vintage (25 yo) lights sometimes referred to as "cat eye" lights.

Monday late in the day I was tying to connect one to the truck wiring. It would not turn on. I then plugged the good LED driving light back in and it would not turn on. I may have blown a fuse. This morning before arriving at work, I thought that it might not be a bad idea to check polarization, attached the white wire to positive and the black wire to negative. the cat eye came on. I decided to get out the DVOM and see if the case of the cat eye and the black wire had continuity. Yep!, the case of the light is grounded. To confirm this, with the light mounted to the bumper, negative wire dangling, I put + power to the white wire and the light came on.
Just two weeks ago or less, I was reading Jamie's light bar thread and though that it was interesting that the relay is switched on by connecting the ground wire to ground. Something tells me that I won't be able to use this stock light circuit with the old cat eyes. It seems as though I need to add a relay and switch to control these add on lights that the cases are grounded. Any thoughts etc? The camera flash makes the light appear to be on in the picture.

 

[J_C]

I'm not sure if I understand what you are stating. I started typing something up, below the dashed line, then re-read your post again and came up with something else. After re-reading, it seems you are stating that the fog lights have positive power always and the ground is what is switching them on and off, and it is a problem because the cat-eye lights have a case ground that always keeps them turned on?

That is not consistent with the wiring diagram I see for my '98, which shows the fog lamp switch, triggers on a fog lamp relay, to supply positive power to the fog lamps and they are always grounded.

As far as your reference to someone else adding a light bar and relay, having the cat-eye grounding its casing should not turn the relay on. According to the wiring diagram, the cat eye and the LED, should both work fine in place of the factory incandescent bulb/housing, as long as you have polarity correct, and as long as they don't draw too much current and blow the fuse.

I may be confused. Jamie's setup, turning on an (added-on?) relay by switching the ground is one way to wire up an additional light bar, but shouldn't be relevant to what you are doing if you are just swapping in the cat eye or LED lights in place of the original factory lights and using the same two wires to power them.

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The stock fog lights on my '98... the best I can remember, have two wires going to the factory incan bulbs, and the plastic casing is not grounding the bulb to the chassis.

Your pictures are a bit dark so it is hard to recognize what I'm looking at. In the last pic,
If your cat eye replacements also take two wires, that should be all you need. If they take one wire and expect ground through the casing to vehicle chassis, then I would devise a means to connect the factory ground wire to them, whether it is soldering, drilling a hole to put in a screw and o-ring type terminal on the factor ground wire, or clamping it on somehow.

'98 wiring diagram PDF attached, for vehicles without daytime running lamps. Since you are in the US, I assume you don't have daytime running lamps? I have that diagram too if you need it.

 

[toypaseo]

Just mount a decent LED in it’s place, and hard wire it to the OEM harness…

 

[Josh P]

I like the cat eye style lights.

 

[allmyEXes]

@J_C. I haven't looked at my '97 wiring diagram book yet. The running lights and headlights on that model do not come on when starting or running.
The cat eye lights have a black ground wire, and the metal case is grounded too.
The stock lights are plastic and have a plastic socket and insulated wiring.
@toypaseo You may have showed me those before I bought and installed LED lights that I just took off. Here is a link to our discussion starting in September 2022. There is alot of information there if you guys don't want to repeat yourselves. September 2022 lighting discussion
@410Fortune My main concern this time is the fact that the cat eye light bodies are grounded and have a ground wire coming out of them too.
I won't be near my '97 book until the morning.
Thanks for all you guys' input past and present.

 

[410Fortune]

The factory fog lights in your stock bumper still get a + and a - wire just like any other light bulb

Ford simply used the negative wire from the switch to operate the relay…. Very common way of doing things this way you run ground wires through the firewall instead of positives

But as far as the light knows it’s still just a bulb getting powered on by its two wires

You can put any light you want down there and use the factory wires

Your cats eye lights simply were planning to be mounted to metal so they would get their ground through the base. Nothing has changed here, you can still hook them up to your factory fog light wires, simply run the factory ground wire to the light base

97 explorer may or May not have “auto lamps”
Feature you can tell By looking to see if the rear view Mirror has the one/off dimmer switch.
I personally hate auto lamps I like to control my own lights thank you very much lol

 

[allmyEXes]

@410Fortune Our 97 does not have auto lamps.
The cat eye lights have a ground wire and the metal housing grounds out too. There is continuity between the black ground wire and the metal light housing. So as long as I have the positive wire from the truck hooked to the white + positive wire, all should be good?
I would like to know how to legitimately know how to disconnect auto lamps from my '98. They are on when I'm running the engine. I have removed all of the bulbs and removed the headlamp assemblies. I used the stock headlamps and signal lights on the white '97 Explorer to get away from the Euro clear style that had broken adjusters. 5.0 #3 is under the hood in this one. The one that had the 4 O2 sensors twisted together.

 

[410Fortune]

I’ve always disabled the auto lamps
By unplugging the rear view Mirror electrics

Some trucks came with drl I remember unplugging a connector behind drivers headlight to disable them ? Been a while
Canadian models had drl and I think some California trucks? Can’t remember

 

[allmyEXes]

It appears that the DRL can be permanently disabled by clipping the R/Y wire at the headlamp switch? I need to study these diagrams a bit more.
I don't want to permanently disconnect the headlights.

 

[allmyEXes]

97mm fog lamp wiring. Should be the same as 97 Explorer.

 

[amj441]

97mm fog lamp wiring. Should be the same as 97 Explorer.
View attachment 459980

Hey,

Here's a copy of the fuel diagram on one page for both Auto Lamp and non-auto lamp