Quick Lighting question

[markedman450]

I will eventually try this on the explorer. But for right now im gonna try it on my second car. Its a 94 saturn and of course horrible lighting. Xtravision bulbs and the lenses are clean no cloudiness. I have heard if done correctly adding a relay to cars and pulling the power for the bulbs directly from the battery or alternator will increase the bulbs lighting capabilities alot. My question is, so i get a 4 plug relay, dorman or whatever... In saturns it should be easier cause it has seperate low and high beams. So i have two wires on each low beam bulbs. I wanna keep the original wiring incase anything would ever stop working so heres my idea. Unplug the old harnesses from the lowbeam bulbs and tape them up. Using one relay ill install roughly inbetween the bulbs, run new 12 gauge wiring to each bulb with new pigtails, one wire grounded each and the other wire from the pigtails going to the relay, another wire on the relay as ground for the relay, a power wire going from the relay to the batter with a 20 amp fuse inbetween. Now the big quesion, can i simply just tap into one of the sides factory low beam harnesses to run the final wire into the relay? (to send the signal to the relay to turn on) I figured instead of cutting anything, just run that wire which should be 86 on the relay i believe, to a section on whatever of the two wires is the source from the factory low beam harnesses and just splice it onto that wire. Any ideas and is that sound like a correct procedure. Just gotta figure out which of the two wires is the one i need.

 

[toypaseo]

You should try Philips X-treme Power bulbs...

 

[Anime]

Your thinking is correct, you just use the stock harness wired to the relay to turn it on, low beam connector to low beam relay, high beam connector to high beam relay, and ground the relays to the body.

They aren't cheap, but you can acutally buy harness connectors that plug into the stock sockets and have wires for connecting to a relay. Of course, you can also make your own with a saw and some cheap bulbs...

XtraVision bulbs should already be giving you a pretty big improvement, you probably won't see a big difference with using relays on a 2001, it's a big difference on an older vehicle with dinky wiring, though.

 

[markedman450]

Yea in the explorer i didnt think it would be much but on a 94 saturn i think it will

 

[markedman450]

Need help, so i rewired the saturn like i said and works great lights are brighter but one problem, i turn the lights off on the steering column and the relay doesnt shut off, headlights stay on. I wired on the relay 30 to the battery, 85 ground, 87 went to my new headlight pigtails, grounded the other pigtail wire to the chasis, and then i found the hot wire of the two on the original low beam harness and plugged that into the 86 on the relay... I do something wrong or are the two wires on the low beams weird cause im lost to as why when i shut the headlight switch off the relay didnt go off too

 

[Bill Kemp]

Do you have DRL on the Saturn? If so use the other side(passenger or driver) of the OEM headlight harness to hook to the 87 post.
If there are two wires going into the low beam socket then I think one of them is for DRL. Other side should only have one wire going into the socket

 

[markedman450]

No daytime running lights. Both sides have to wires going into the harness for the lowbeam lights. I figured one was a ground and one the hot. I tried both wires one doesnt even turn the relay on the other one does but does it all the time not just when i turn the lights on. Thats whats confusing me. I know ford had a weird way of wiring things where their ground wires became partially powered when certain things were turned on. I figured a two wired plug would be pos/ground but i must be wrong. Ive done this to a couple cars and never had this issue. Only thing i did differently is usually i ground the relay to a bolt, then each light i ground seperate. This time cause i couldnt find really good places to ground i ran both lights ground wire and the relay ground all onto the Negative terminal of the battery. That wouldnt change anything would it?? Right now i temp wired the lights back to stock. One note, on the driver side neither factory wire going into the lowbeam harness would get the actuator to kick on. Also stopped working all together i think the wires are brittle. So right now i have the passenger side just like stock and spliced into the harness to run wires over to the driver side so i got both lights for now. Any ideas??

 

[corkey]

maybe look into a high 4 kit, thatturns on both the high and low beams when the high beams are on,
it is just a simple relay, that uses the power from the high beam to turn on a relay that uses the power from the alternator to run the low beams, so all 4 are on,,

 

[corkey]

painless wiring has a kit, i think about 25 $, ,

 

[markedman450]

I think its a grounded switch system which means i gotta run the factory ground wire to the relay 85 point instead of grounding the relay to the chasis/battery. I had this same problem with my explorer. Im gonna give that a try and see what happens. Im just hoping i see a big improvement in lighting that what the 94 saturn is putting out now, with how small the stock wires are its gotta have some serious voltage drop stock.

 

[corkey]

the painless kit is for a chevy truck, 1989 to 2000 c/k 1500,
same headlight setup,