Thanks guys. I used 10 ga. wire when I did mine, and I can't imagine that you'd need more than that. The first relays I bought were typical "hanging out on the shelf" type foglight relays. I purchased three of them, and two were faulty right out of the package so I returned them all.

I ended up using a more expensive, but higher quality model but I'll have to look up the part numbers on that.

Every night when I'm driving home in the Audi I keep thinking I've really got to get this done soon, 'cause these lights just plain suck! And to think that I used to be impressed by them (but they are still bright compared to most cars).

I can't say how soon that this will come (Christmas/New Year and all that), but I should have a few days off soon as long as the wife doesn't put me to work...

 

What ampage relays should we utilise.

 

Kinetsu..the relay idea is great..I'm wondering if the stock lighting can be repalced with a newr type Halogen ..the kind that you insert into the back of the reflective haedlight shell..(hope you getwhat I'm tryin to explain)..I like drivin at night..highway cruise..but it ticks me off when you can only see like 8 car lengths in front of your car..Xenon,Halogen something like that would be great..no problem wiring stuff here..just throw a schematic and it's wire and solder time!

 

The concept of a relay makes a lot of sense to me, but I'm wondering, how do you control regular lights vs. high beams?

I mean in my mind I could understand a single "on/off" connection. It's sorta like a transistor, where giving power to the gate allows power to flow through the bridge (my terms may be off a bit)..... but is there such a thing as a "double relay" or whatever that helps control highbeams? or do you lose those when you do this conversion?

Jon

 

jon: you would use two seperate relays, one for low beams, one for high. the wiring would be almost completely isolated.

there are double throw relays, but they would turn on both the lows and the highs at the same time, which would likely overheat the bulb.

 

Check out this site, www.danielsternlighting, as mentioned it explains the whys and hows of the whole thing. I'm sure there will be 1st gen specific details that this write up will include above and beyond whats on the stern site.

I volunteer to test out the write up on my car as well. I've done it one another vehicle but not an rx7.

Looking forward to the how to :-D

 

Lots of speaker shops sale a kit that is fully ready to do this. You connect one power line to the battery and a ground then the headlight plug, plugs into the kit and the kit connects to the headlight.

 

For $30 you can get the harness from VB and it plug and play!

 

did u guys just t off the relay to each bulb? or get 5 pin relays?

 

I put 2 relays in. 1 for high beam and one for low beam. took me maybe 1/2 to 1 hour to do, but I'm **** when its comes to detail and that included testing to figure out which wires do what.

Between that and installing a 105 Amp GM CS130 alternator (direct bolt in) my lights are amazing. The stock alt is only 50 amps.... Heater fan, windows, etc all work a lot better now too



I'll be doing the sma ething to my '80 Toyota 4x4 soon, but I've got 2 100W lights up front already so its not as big of an issue.

 

Oh yah, the relays I got were factory ford 5 pins relays with matching pigtails brand new from the local surplus store for 99cents each.

And if you lay everything out right you'll only need 2 pieces of wire (about 5 feet total) to go from the relay which sits beside the battery and driver's headlight over to the passenger headlight.

 

20 amps should be plenty

High beams are only 65W

so 65Wx2/14.4V = 9 Amps


Think the ones I used were 25amps. Over kill won't hurt anything in this case.

 

Don't forget the GROUNDS! The electrons need to make the entire trip back to the Battery/alternator to get a good meal and some sleep after doing all that hard work heating up those head lamp filaments! There is no sense in making them fight their way through the adversity of skimpy wires and poor connections just to get home. When the path is difficult, those tired electrons slow down and back up the works. That makes it hard for the fresh troops to get to the action.

It might be an interesting "study" to take a 4 foot length of #12 wire with one end attached to the alternator body or the Battery Neg- terminal and then touch the other end to the neg- terminal of the headlamp while the lamp is on. If there is any intensity change, then improvement of the ground is indicated. This same test applied to the POS + side would tell a story as well. Intensity change giving merit to the addition of relays ect. Careful! When making such tests we're talking direct short in either test if the wrong wires are brought together.

Just thinking of grounds

CalG

 

Yes, and solder the connections rather than just using crimp connectors if you want to do it right.

Sorry about the delay, but my Mother in law is in intensive care after having a heart attack/stroke. So my wife is 400 miles away at the moment, and I have the kids to care for while juggling babysitters/work.

Sounds like Big Ern knows what he's talking about though, maybe he can post some pics? I'll still do this when I can, but not until things settle down a bit. Sorry.

 

http://danielsternlighting.com/products/products.html

That's the link to the harness that they sell. I believe its a heavy duty model, better than VB sells. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see it.

 

I wish he [Daniel Stern] had a picture of the harness. The VB harness below looks kind of cheap.

 

I don't see one labeled as "heavy duty" which one do you suggest? I would think the one labeled "RIK-2" would do the job nicely. Am I right in assuming that you have 2 relays, one for high beams split off to both lights, and one for low beams also split off for both lights? If so then that seems pretty simple, I might have to do this.. Looking forward to the writeup.

 

Yeah, that VB kit looks pretty cheesey. That's the biggest reason I built my own, I wanted overkill and that's what I got. 10 gauge power and ground wires, with soldered connections at every point, no short-cuts or cheap materials. The only thing I did wrong (or rather, would have done differently) was that I did the work up by the firewall rather than at the front of the bay near the headlights. This made for a lot of extra wire use, but functionally its still fine. If I had tied the relays in right up by the headlights though, it would have been much simpler. I had other headlight wiring issues at the time though, so I tried to replace as much of the original wiring as I could at the time. And yes, you can either set this up with two relays or four (unneeded redundancy there though). Stick with two relays and T the power off to each headlight. For the headlight connections (plug) they do sell some heavy duty ones, but I didn't have any, so I ended up using standard female spade plugs to connnect to the light. This won't be a problem, but I'll have to be careful to get the connections right again if I ever have to replace a bulb.

 

I just tied it all into the stock wiring where possible. So my plug on the back of the klights and the grounds are all the same, as well as about 6" of the positive wire. This WILL NOT affect the brightness of the lights to any noticable degree (so long as you make sure the existing grounds have a good clean contact). Kentetsu, you can try to verify this with your light meter if you want. I'd come visit so you could test mine agaisn't yours if I were closer.

The biggest bottle neck in the stock system is having to go through to old worn out combo switch and ignition in the steering column. By eliminating this with a simple relay retaining most of the stock wiring like I've done will make an amazing difference and is much simpler to do.



Also, I would Highly recomend that you buy and extra relay to throw in the glovebox for a spare. It would suck to be on a long highway cruize at night and have one of them fail on you (although if one failed you would still have either high or low beam so its not like you'd have nothing)



I would take pics, but I've got everything all tied up and shrink wrapped nicely. If I have time after the busy christmas season I'll undo one side and snap a few pics.

 

Thank you for the reply, 20 amp relay, so would a 30 amp in line fuse be about right.

 

Just found that I still have about 10 of the Ford 5 pin relays so I'm in good shape.

 

personally, I would use a 20amp fuse since you're using a 20amp relay, but it shouldn't really matter

 

20 amp relay = overkill.

This is good as it will last longer, but you want to use the smallest permissible fuse that will not blow from extended useage, so if your target amperage is 9.5 amps, a 15 amp fuse would probably be preferable. This will aloow a little extra for the initial current flow, will allow for heating of the fuse due to current flow without blowing easy, and yet will still blow at a low enough amperage so that you are not worried aobut short circuits.

kenn

 

Well I'm doing this mod, all I have left is the drivers side wire connections. It costs around $20 in parts. I did see that wiring harness VB sells, it looks just like the one they have at NAPA by APC. Shitty!!!!!!!!!!
2 30amp Bosch relays (had these already) normally 2.99 each
2 Weather pack fuse holders (2.49 each
2 relay wire connectors (had these, makes it a very easy install, partsexpress.com) 1.50
2 H4 connectors for the lights (3.99 each)
12 awg primary wire (Red, Black, orange)
fuses 15amp for lows, 20 amp for highs

Make sure you solder and shrink wrap every connection.

 

I made my lights brighter on my 85 with these simple two products:

Matrix motorsports 7'' round crystal clear headlight casings with H4 bulb conversion, they look nice without the light scattering bumps/ridges everywhere on the lens (pure parabolic reflection). Plus they have an extra blinker light hole...

Nokia Halogen Xenon mix bright filament bulbs, they give about the brightest light with a blue HID like tint I've seen, after I removed the glare guards inside the lamp casings. It beats the blue tinted yet ultra dim walmart varieties. And NO RE-WIRING req'd for these.

Or if you want to go all out like I did, custom fabricate your own flushmounted lights, using Bosch E40 HID projectors and PIAA high beam lamps inside lexan/sheetmetal casings which I completely replaced my 81's lights with. More expensive, but much sharper and 10x more effective.