Headlight Wiring Upgrade

[Moriarty]

Finally got around to tackling this. Not as clean as I’d like, but everything worked first try, so that’s good. I’m guessing I should probably put some lower amp fuses in than the 30 amp ones they came with?

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by Moriarty

Finally got around to tackling this. Not as clean as I’d like, but everything worked first try, so that’s good. I’m guessing I should probably put some lower amp fuses in than the 30 amp ones they came with?

Getting it to work right is 95% of the job, making it look trick is only 5%, that looks just fine to me. And a 30 amp fuse is good -- if you short on something that'll blow before the wires melt, which is all you want. Good work.

[Blas]

Red wire to first relay and double crimp a second wire jumper to the second relay at the first relays connector. Will really cleanup the installation. Black heat shrink material on all wiring, just don’t heat shrink it. 90 degree wire splices, not good looking. Once again double wire crimped at connectors make nice splices, loose all the multicolored electrical tape, electrical tape is for houses. (And wire looms) Solder connectors when necessary. If you are going to splice two wires together, they should run parallel, and be soldered. Get multiple sized rolls of heat shrink tubing, (Harbor Freight sells them) split larger tubing and insert smaller tubing at branch locations. Everything black will disappear under the hood.
Blas

[Gaz64]

Originally Posted by Blas

Red wire to first relay and double crimp a second wire jumper to the second relay at the first relays connector. Will really cleanup the installation. Black heat shrink material on all wiring, just don’t heat shrink it. 90 degree wire splices, not good looking. Once again double wire crimped at connectors make nice splices, loose all the multicolored electrical tape, electrical tape is for houses. (And wire looms) Solder connectors when necessary. If you are going to splice two wires together, they should run parallel, and be soldered. Get multiple sized rolls of heat shrink tubing, (harbor Freightcsells them) split larger tubing and insert smaller tubing at branch locations. Everything black will disappear under the hood.
Blas

Yes, I would agree.

I would have spent more time, and make it all black and more compact. the whole lot would almost disappear. I spend more time on installation, during when I know my installation will work, eg: EFI, complex alarms, remote start etc. I made my first remote start in 1996, and ALL was hidden except the added relays in the fusebox.

[Moriarty]

Originally Posted by Blas

Red wire to first relay and double crimp a second wire jumper to the second relay at the first relays connector. Will really cleanup the installation. Black heat shrink material on all wiring, just don’t heat shrink it. 90 degree wire splices, not good looking. Once again double wire crimped at connectors make nice splices, loose all the multicolored electrical tape, electrical tape is for houses. (And wire looms) Solder connectors when necessary. If you are going to splice two wires together, they should run parallel, and be soldered. Get multiple sized rolls of heat shrink tubing, (Harbor Freight sells them) split larger tubing and insert smaller tubing at branch locations. Everything black will disappear under the hood.
Blas

Thanks, looking much better now.

[patrickt]

That looks lovely.

[Gaz64]

Originally Posted by patrickt

That looks lovely.

Yes, that is a much nicer installation now.

[patrickt]

You know that the headlight switches we had back in our cars from the 60's had circuit breakers built in to them (most, at least). Of course our Lucas toggle headlight switches can barely handle ten amps, much less have a circuit breaker built in to them. Adding the two relays in this thread to move current off the switch drops the amperage down to three amps or less, depending on whether you're activating the VW latching relay. Still, you ought to have a circuit breaker on the feed coming off the ignition switch and going to the Lucas toggle switch just in case something unusual happens. I finally got around to doing this today and chose a manual reset circuit breaker of 15 amps. I chose a manual reset because if this breaker ever trips then there is something clearly wrong that requires attention, not just automatic resetting and then clicking off again and repeating. On an ERA, just snip the brown wire at the eyelet of the "always hot" BATT post on the battery and run that brown wire to the load side of the circuit breaker (this particular circuit breaker actually labels its load and line feed terminals, most do not). Put a new eyelet terminal on the line feed to the circuit breaker and put that on the BATT terminal of the ignition switch. Mount the circuit breaker in a convenient spot and label it clearly so that the next guy that's working on your car, after you're dead and gone, can figure out what you did. Here are two pics showing the installation. It all takes about an hour. Chances are that circuit breaker will never trip because it would take a pretty bizarre circumstance to short that headlight feed to ground.

[Blas]

Very professional looking…. Well done… Blas