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Left in the dark

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master cylinder lid gasket-can't find one

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The dimmer has 3 wires. Don't you have a service manual? #@$%! 1 from the headlite switch going in, and 2 out, 1 for low beams, 1 for hi beams. Put 1 relay on each "out" wire. Under the dash is the easiest spot.

pete



hahhah, well of course i have a manual pete, but i consider it my job, being that im the youngest greenest member of the group, to keep you busy :-laf



yea i will look at the book tho and figure it out... ... preciate the help





interesting idea MOAB, ill consider that when i get into this tomaro. thanks
 
Ohhhh, wise guy! :mad:

:-laf :-laf

When I do mine, I'm going to put the relays under the hood. (i think) And just tap into the existing wires to the lights.

This is all up in the air right now. I just sprayed rust killer on my cab this morning. I've got a little ways to go yet! ;)
 
what is a 20amp circut breaker and what does it have to do with the relays to the headlights, is it necessary if i do it under the dash aswell??
 
alright Pete, i bought two of these guys. their what i could find. should i disregard the switch and the ground connections on the relay? and just wire the single wire in??? hope the schematic makes sense.
 
Yup, that's what you want! You need the switch and ground to activate the relay. Run the wire from the dimmer or light switch to the "switch" side. Run a ground wire to the "ground". Run a power from the battery, thru a circuit breaker or fuse, to the #30 terminal. Run from the #87 terminal to the lights.

You should have a fuse or something in there, if not, you get a short and burn the whole harness up. A 100 miles from home. :{

Got it now?



Use the FSM to see what color wires you need to go to and from. Unless you're using Ken's idea and running new to the lights.
 
alright Pete this should be it then all leave you alone for a while :-laf



let me just clarify onething here. you say to run the power from the battery into the #30/51 blade on the relay, and the wire that goes to the lights into the #87 blade on the relay??? im not sure if it matters but on the schematic it calls #30/51 the 12v out and #87 the 12v in??? can i technically use either. also, where do i tap into the battery Positive cable? and the ground i asume can be wired to any part of the cab or steel under the dash? sorry to be so difficult, im not the fastest when i comes to learning from just reading it, i learn best from doing, or seeing it done once... . but im sure you already knew that :D



thanks a million
 
Yup, 30 and 87 are interchangeable, the juice will flow either way.

For the power tap, I recommend using the positive battery cable and then wiring in a 20 Amp Circuit breaker. They should be available at whatever auto parts house you frequent. I don't like the thought of using a fuse cause a temporary short will happen at night just long enough to bring on the darkness. a breaker will reset and you will be on the road again.

Your factory wiring uses a circuit breaker on the headlight circuit so if you wanted to you could look at the wiring diagrams (chapter 8 IIRC) and pick your juice from there for your relays.

I made my own circuit because this harness seems to be pushing it when it comes to current capablility. If I can pull some loads off of the factory harness I feel a little better.
 
I just got a couple 20A and 30A fuses tonight. how does the circut breaker work??? and where on the battery positive cable do i splice in?? its so heavy gauge how/where do i run the little wire from?
 
sorry i no exactly how a circuit breaker works, ive wired houses and stuff like that before, its just too late for me. so you suggest wirring in a 20A breaker instead of a fuse? should i do this for the headlights and for the taillights/markerlights.
 
Jimmy, you need to drink more! :-laf Breaker is better than a fuse, like Ken said, it will reset if it blows. Put an eye on the wire and put it on the clamp bolt on the battery terminal. 1 relay for high beam, 1 for low, 1 for tailights. If you use a heavy wire, you can feed all the relays with a jumper.

You're not useing 12/2 w/ ground are you? :-laf
 
well pete, im still 3 years from being a legal drinker :-laf soooo... .



ok i have questions, i got the 20A breaker.



1. do i need a breaker for each relay? or can i wire all three off a single breaker?



2. i thought the hi and low beams were off the same wire? guess i didnt look close enough at the diagram in the FSM



3. do i NOT need a relay for the marker lights?
 
Nah, I didn't drink before I was 21 either... for the most part. I know what you mean though, all my friends were always at parties back then getting intoxicated. Thats a good choice to stay away... although I'm basically an alcoholic now... maybe you shouldn't really listen to anything I say too much, I'm not exactly an outstanding role model for anyone...



Anyway, I'm not an electrical engineer by any means, but I'll give you what little I know on the subject. Someone with some actually intelligence jump in here if need be... watch for erroneous information. There are different wires between the high beams and low beams... they are actually 2 different bulbs. As far as one breaker for 3 relays goes, Im 99% sure you cant do that. The point of a relay is not only to take an electrical load off of a switch, but to cut out the problem arc when you flip the switch. A standard switch, when you flip it, goes from open circut to closed, I should hope thats general knowledge. The problem is there is a split second when opening or closing the circut where you have a gap small enough for the current to arc. When the current arcs, the circut can overload and blow a fuse, trip a breaker, or if none of the two are installed, fry the next weakest link. Things like a phone charger, a CB, or smaller lights and stuff like that, it doesnt matter as much. Those circuts dont take as much juice, so the gap in which the arc will jump becomes so minimal that it doesnt hurt anything. On headlights, they take some juice. When you pull the switch, theres enough current draw to create a little bigger arc over a bigger gap. This burns up your contacts on the switch eventually. What a relay does is re route the juice that the lights take so that it never goes through the switch. A relay generally has some kind of magnetic contacts that jump between open and closed so fast that theres almost no arc. With a relay, all that pulling out the headlight switch does is power up the relay. When power reaches the relay, it activates and takes power straight from the battery to the headlights. There ends up being one isolated circut between the switch and the relay, and another between the higher draw side of the relay and the headlights. Moral of the story? The side marker lights, cab lights, and things like that are smaller bulbs with less juice... they probably will be ok right off the switch if thats the way you wanna wire it. This is also why you cant have one breaker for 3 relays. If you put it anywhere on the circut with the switch, it would be pointless because thats the low draw circut. If you put it on the power source on the high draw side of the relays, or on the negative before ground but after the lights, you would end up breaking the circut every time you had all 3 things turned on. You could get a higher amp breaker so it could run all 3, but then you defeat the purpose of it any time you only use one relay circut. With one circut, even if theres a short, the breaker will be too high to open up from just one circut and you'll blow up a headlight bulb or a relay or God knows what else before the circut breaker even opens.



Circut breakers aint cheap, so I can see why you'd only want to use one, but keep in mind they dont blow like fuses. If you short something with fuses, you go buy new ones every time. When you short something on a breaker, you reset the breaker, its not junk.
 
Hmm... I'm left in the dark every day of my life... metaphorically speaking of course... That little light bulb above my head is getting dimmer and dimmer I think.
 
Yup, that counts. When you gonna come out? ;)



Matt is right, sorta kinda. And some relays have a diode in them so the voltage doesn't spike thru the system and burn stuff up.

You could get away with 1 breaker for high and low, cause only 1 will be on at a time, high or low. You don't have that many parking lights, so I would tie them into the taillights.



The high and low run off 1 wire, before the dimmer switch. I would do the relays after it.
 
Sorta kinda? Do I get a C+... tell me at least its passing... If I get another F they might not let me graduate.



Yeah, I guess I didnt really clarify that about the one wire before the switch. Its like a standard toggle switch, one input, two outputs... But when it really boils down, everything on the truck traces back to one wire right off the battery. As far as anything you're chasin after though, Jimmy, yeah, its two wires.



It would be kinda neat to hook up the brights and regular beams on one wire somehow so when that jerk cuts you off you can make him think an airplane is landing on the road behind him.
 
Some guys do that, low beams only, and both. OHOHOH! :D oh, wont work, they look like 4 terminals! :mad: Jimmy, you got 4 or 5 terminal relays? If you have 5 terminal, on the low beam one, run a jumper from terminal 87 to 87a. Then, when the relay is off, power goes thru terminal 87a to the low beams, WALA! Both are on! Wait, still won't work, the light will stay on when the switch is off... ..... :eek: I can figure it out, if you want. No biggie! ;)
 
You could do it with 3 relays... I think. Have one relay for the low beams, one relay for the high beams, and one relay for the low beams on the high beam setting. When you pull the switch out it activates the first low beam relay, then when you click on the high beams, the wire goes from the switch to the high beam relay terminal 86, and a jumper from terminal 86 on your high beams to terminal 86 on your second low beam relay. Hmm... . my head hurts... someone check my work here, I'm not sure I'm right about that.
 
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