Off Roading Wiring up aux. driving and offroad lights... which highbeam wire??

[96ram]

I have a pair of piaa driving 520's and KC 8 inch rally's that I want to come on with the high beams. Wiring them to the headlamp harness is the obvious choice but I think it would be better to wire them to the wire coming from highbeam switch down the steering column. Anyone know which that is on a 96 like mine?

If I know which wire it is it'll be a breeze but I am doing other work on the truck right now and can't spend the time testing.

It is for use in central america where you need all the light you can get on the roads :-laf but I don't want to blind people either so I want them to switch off easily and quickly. I may put in a master switch aswell to turn them on independent of the high beam.

 

[05mxdiesel]

Instead of splicing into your wiring hanress, just run though a two way switch fused off your battery. Thats how I have been running my aux lights in the front and also my aux reverse lights. I haven't had any problems with it this way, and if you decide to take them off the wiring is easy discarded and keeps your factory harness intact. In the past I have run into a large mess from prior owners splicing into the factory harness.

 

[B.G. Smith]

The wier is red with an orange tracer. bg

 

[96ram]

Thanks for the advice but as I will be using the lights primarily on the highway I need to be able to switch them on and off quickly(and we're talking bad third world highways down there! and 4 aux lights to operate aswell as the highbeams... . ) I don't want to blind

people especially down there. Is the wire still red with orange tracer on the steering column? Or is there some more accessible point under the hood. I don't want splice near the battery and it is really tight around there so could be a pain to fix if/when it corrodes... .

 

[B.G. Smith]

The dwg. shows it to be red all the way from the multi-function switch which is located at the steering col. where the turn signal switch is attached. bg

 

[96ram]

Thankyou very much! I will post my results... .



UPDATE : just looked at the mass of wires coming down the steering column and amongs the cocktail of colours there is a big red one(about 12 guage), a red with orange stripe along it(16guage?) and a few super skinny red and orange ones(20 guage??). I think it must be the one that looks like 16 guage. DC wouldn't have headlights going through the super skinny ones? and if it were the big red one then my switch would never have fried right? Oh well if I get it wrong I can always RTV it.

Thanks again

 

[96ram]

UPDATE



Took some more parts off between jobs and saw that the big red wire comes from the ignition switch area and the skinny wires from other switches but the the 16 guage(?) red and orange stripe is the only one of those that comes from the steering column multifuntion switch. Sounds like this is the one. When I get the other stuff finished on my truck I will test that wire and post the results!

Thanks again

 

[96ram]

The Right Colour!

OK so it wasn't the blood red with light orange(yellow?) wire but after a lot of calling up baffled service departments and some wire cutting I found it!

Drum roll please... . Oo.

It is DARK red with orange.

The wire was so dirty, hidden and the orange so faded I had overlooked it previously but now it works!!