Aftermarket Lights

[95kyexp]

Ok. I love lights. I had 4 sets on my ATV. Ive found that in vehicles, its REAL easy to forget and leave something on, and when you run to get out of school, your battery is dead and you are there an hour later trying to get a charge. I want to avoid that.

I had a mustang and i wired in fog lights to the convertible top harness ( mine was a hard top, but it still had the harness. It was universal ) And it worked fine... for 110 watts of light. Im going to have (4) 100 watt lights on the roof, and 2 55 watt lights on the bumper, and 2 in the stock position.

I want to wire my lights to where they come on with the vehicle ONLY if i have the switch on. So if i accidently leave my lights on, they will shut off with the vehicle. I need to know where i can wire these in... i can bump up the fuses if i have to. Seems 400 watts will take 36 amps. How can i achieve this?

heres another question. On my mustang, i wired my lights to where i can run the fog lights seperate from everything else, and it looks awesome cruising town of a night. I want to do this with my explorer. I have a stock fog light switch and harness... i have stock fog lights too, but as you may guess... they are thrashed from the previous owner. How can i achieve this?

And another question. How did everyone mount their lights on the roof? I saw a writeup of a 10$ light bar, but it seems walkthroughs dont work unless i have pictures of each step. I thought about using the stock light bar, which it dont bother me to drill holes. However. I do have access to a welding shop and free steel.... so i thought about fabbing up a complete roof rack.. but im unsure as to how to mount it. Any help? Also. How did those who did this run their wiring? Not that it really matters, because im sure my way of wiring is going to differ from everyone elses... I am determined to run these lights so they are automatically turned off. Thanks for any and all help guys... its really appreciated.

Also lol... I FOUND MY KEYLESS ENTRY CODE!!! Thanks a bunch guys!!!

 

[oplitic]

Just a quick sketch in photoshop. This wiring will make it so you need your parking lights on for your fog lights to be on. Obviously when you go to leave your truck and your parking lights are on, it's going to chime to tell you your lights are on. It doesn't draw a lot of power to trip the relay so it's ok to go off of it. If it doesn't make snese jsut say so and I'll explain it more in depth.

 

[Nocturnall]

Well his drawing is much nicer then mine first off. I'm a relay fool. With the way my drawings are....if they match what's in my head. When your truck is on and the switch is on your lights will come on, switch on truck off no lights, switch off truck on no lights. So basically you can choose if they are on or off when the truck is on but when the truck is off ya got nothing.

30a relay is like $8 and the switch is pretty cheap. It's the way I would run it, I would probably look for a 50a relay or run 2 relays.

 

[rob17san]

I got lucky. The Limited has a battery saver feature built in. maybe look into how that works? Maybe consider the auto lights that are operated through the rear view mirror like on the limiteds also.

 

[DeRocha]

In general the use of relay's should be employed to keep high power out of the cabin (and as short a distance as possible from the battery). In the diagram below the use of 2 low power switches and 2 relays will allow independent control of each pair or lights. You cannot run all four 100w lights on a single 30A relay as the power requirement exceeds its rating.

 

[Nocturnall]

Both of your pictures are so much prettier then mine. Guess I wasn't specific enough with my desc, I would have had the relays right by the battery which is what I did with the relays for the electric radiator fans I put in.

My sport has the battery saver feature, I think a lot of if not all the explorers had it. My ex's and my 4dr I crashed both had it....

 

[DeRocha]

If you plan to use the lights like high beams (as I do with mine) then I used the high beam wire instead of the parking/driving light wire.. This is cool because you can leave the switches ON all the time and the Off Road lights will come on whenever you flash to pass or activate your high beams.

 

[Nocturnall]

hahaha that would be a nice warning. Flash the highbeams and 510watts of lights come on in addition to your factory head lights.

 

[95kyexp]

I figured i would have to look into relays. The two lights i bought are 100 watts each. O hooked one up to my battery and found out that the lights i bought are useless. I can light things up a mile away ( NO SARCASM. Litterally a mile ) but it dont light anything up around me. I may keep these two light, and buy 2 more flood beam lights to go on the roof as well. I think i will hook these up seperately, so i can run floods or spots. I know im going to have to get into the whole relay thing, which i know NOTHING about.

Where can i get these relays yall are talking about? I believe i know how to wire them up. Ill run the wires off the 12 volt accessory plug. My explorer has the auto headlights and so on and so forth. It kinda of suprised me. I have everything but leather seats and the moon roof. Not sure what package i got, its a 2 door with black trim on the bottom and fender flares.

Anyways...


So, i run one wire to the relay that activates it... which i need to find a power source that comes on with the vehicle... Where is one at? In my mustang, the 12 volt accessory was always on... i forgot and left a power inverter in and it ran my battery almost all the way down. Where is a remote power source? I wire the switch between this remote power source and the relay.. Correct?

Next, i wire the hot lead into the battery, this will give me the power to run the lights. I ground the lights wherever i want. Is this it?


Also. How can i wire my fog lights so i can run them by themselves, or with the parking lights? Thanks for the fast reply. Also, thanks for the sketches... believe it or not they all make sense. Im used to being told to " Go read... n00b ". Thanks for the kindness.

 

[Nocturnall]

You should look into getting a multimeter if you don't already have one. They can help greatly when wiring and doing anything electrical. Harbor freight has them pretty cheap, I think you can get them for cheapish at home depot as well, or autozone. Autozone is also where you would find those relays.

If you have an after market radio then on the back of it on the harness there should be a solid yellow wire which would be your ignition wire. You would want to run from that yellow wire, into the switch, out of the switch to the relays which you would want to locate behind the bumper close to the lights or at the battery, would be better behind each light set though to keep it simple. Derocha's diagram is AWESOME and should tell you how to wire it all up if you follow it. The blue wire on his diagram would be from the parking lights line, you could run it from the yellow line behind the radio though if you wanted so they would be able to be run without the parking or head lights on.

 

[oplitic]

You should look into getting a multimeter if you don't already have one. They can help greatly when wiring and doing anything electrical. Harbor freight has them pretty cheap, I think you can get them for cheapish at home depot as well, or autozone. Autozone is also where you would find those relays.

If you have an after market radio then on the back of it on the harness there should be a solid yellow wire which would be your ignition wire.

This just reminded me, if you're not running any amps/subs, you could use the blue wire which is a remote turn on, instead of having to tap into the yellow wire. And the yellow wire is an accessory wire, turns on so you can pull the key backwards and listen to music, etc.

 

[Nocturnall]

You could use the remote (blue) line even if your running an amp but whenever the radio is on the lights will be able to go on. Granted same with my way. I know there has to be a wire you can use that is only active when the ignition is on, there is a grey....yellow stripe wire maybe that is only active when the engine is running but it's the tach line, i wouldn't use that.....

 

[DeRocha]

In the following diagram you can control 3 separate lights with 3 switches using 3 relays. The driving light wire (blue) can be any 12v source, but if you tap into an Accessory circuit (one that only has 12v when the key is turned to Acc or run) then you'd help prevent your battery from being accidentally killed. Having a color coded vehicle wiring diagram is very helpful in finding these wires. As mentioned by the others a voltage meter, or test light is a very useful tool used to probe wires to indicate which one's have 12v and which ones don't.

In my example I traced the headlight switch back to a wire bundle under the dash board. I then turned on my headlights and used a voltage tester with the neg end clipped to a good ground and then touched the red end of the tester onto any metal wire connectors to see which ones had power. When I found a wire that had power I would shut the headlights off and see if the wire still had power.. it if didn't have power then I found the correct circuit, otherwise the wire had power for some other circuit and I kept looking..

 

[Nocturnall]

I would make sure to use fuses as Derocha has in his diagram as well, especially with lights since they will be getting blasted with rain.

I just actually used my multimeter to trace down a wire that only came on when the engine was running for my subs. This way I can have the radio on with the engine off and no subs killing my battery, turn the truck on and the subs pop on.

You cannot beat the price on this one:


http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=90899

I've been using this one for a few years

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=37772

 

[95kyexp]

I have an amp/subs... and they pull the juice... 1000 watts... so i dont need to use that wire. Where is another one? Does the cigarette lighter come on with the vehicle, or is it hot all the time?

How can i wire my fog lights so they can come on whenever i want them to, with the vehicle on?

 

[Nocturnall]

The cig lighter is on all the time.

Fog lights, wire from battery to switch on the dash. from switch on the dash to the lights. Or you can run a wire from the battery to the lights then run the ground on the lights to the switch on the dash, then from the switch to a good ground in the cabin.Less wires if you run the ground to the switch, dunno if it's any safer or not though.

 

[DeRocha]

I have an amp/subs... and they pull the juice... 1000 watts... so i dont need to use that wire. Where is another one? Does the cigarette lighter come on with the vehicle, or is it hot all the time?

How can i wire my fog lights so they can come on whenever i want them to, with the vehicle on?

In my above diagram all switches are connected to the driving lights so they will only work if the driving lights are on. You need to decide how you want each of the 3 lights to be controlled.

Do you want the switch to be active:

Any time (No Key required)
When the key is turned to Acc or Run position. (Key required)
When the parking lights are on (No key needed)
When the headlights are on (No Key required)
When the high beams are on. (No Key required)

Once that is done you would find the appropriate wire (by the methods we already gave you) and connected it to the switch(s).

The cig lighter is on all the time.

Fog lights, wire from battery to switch on the dash. from switch on the dash to the lights. Or you can run a wire from the battery to the lights then run the ground on the lights to the switch on the dash, then from the switch to a good ground in the cabin.Less wires if you run the ground to the switch, dunno if it's any safer or not though.

The best practice as shown in my above diagrams is:
1) Keep High power wires out of the cabin. (Safety)
2) Keep High power wires as short as possible. (short wires=best performance)

The longer the wire length the more resistance it will have. This means the battery/alternator will need to supply more power to the wires to compensate for their length. By making the High Power wires (red wires in my diagram) as short as possible there will be less voltage drop (less strain on your electrical system). By keeping High power wires out of the cabin there will be less chance of a wire being cut, nicked, or otherwise damaged which could short out causing a fire.

Also a stock alternator puts out 95A of power. This translates to 1140 watts of power output. Obviously if you run greater than 1140W your battery will be supplying the rest (In this state you are draining the battery as the alternator can't keep up)

 

[AAnnddrreeww]

I'm garbage at electrical things
But as for the mounting of the lights

I mounted mine on the stock bar and they look great. They set a bit farther back than they would on a basket, but for $70 total for the whole job I'm not going to complain. Here's a pic of how they look/sit on top.