needing help with wiring off road lights

I have 2 100w lights. What are the ways you would wire them up?

 

Well, you could wire them up to a switch. Or wire them into your high beams with a relay. there's probly quite a few threads regarding this. Along with some googling. It's pretty straight forward. Relays can be a bit confusing at first if you're not electrical savvy. But pretty simple. If a relay, you'll wire the relay to your battery for +. - grounded. Then other positive on relay to your lights. And the activation pin on relay goes to your high beam circuit/fuse with and add-a-circuit. Or splicing. Not sure on second gens but 1st gens require a little bit different wiring with the relay as high beams are negatively switched.

 

Ya I don't want to wire into headlights. I'm not too electrical savvy. I have a glass fuse holder along with a relay. Used to have other lights just wired to a switch without a relay or fuse. Is that safe to do?

 

I would just wire them to a switch. Positive to fuse and then to switch. Ground to ground. Just Google off-road light wiring and there are some simple pictures. I would use a fusw just to protect your lights in case anything random happens.

 

If you need a spot to run switch into cab if u look on right side of engine bay there is a gromet going into the firewall with a few wires. If you carefully puncture gromet u can feed wires into drivers foot well and then put into a switch spot

 

Thanks. I don't think I'll use a relay. I'm not going to be using the lights everyday or anything

 

Yeah I would just keep it to a switch. Simple stupid. Toss up some pictures when you get them all lit up!

 

Not a good shot with my camera phone. But installed and working. Just need to aim them up more

 

Very Nice! Glad you got them all squared away.

 

Hello Gentlemen @andrewribicki1 @toendanger , since OP's question has been answered, I figured I would thread jack instead of creating a new thread. I was trying to wire my Rigid Industries back up light kit using the provided harness but instead of using the provided switch, I would like to use my Contura rocker switches instead. This is my current setup. The middle switch powers my hood lights. They're wired to turn on/off with the truck off. How can I connect the switches with the Rigid harness? Any help is appreciated .

 

Can you take a picture of the harness you have? Are you trying to connect all these switches to the harness?

 

This is a picture of the harness that was provided. Since one of the switches is currently active, I would like to use one of the remaining switches to activate the lights.

 

From the looks of it, it is just a matter of putting your wires together put your powers together and signals together and grounds together then just run them like normal. I'm not familiar with this harness. Hopefully someone will chime in. I don't see why you couldn't just cut out old switch that is on the harness and throw yours in there

 

Thanks. That's the part that throws me off. With the provided switch, I can simply connect the wires to their respective locations. However, with my Contura switches, there are already wires connected to the pins and that leaves only 1 empty pin per unused switch.

 

Hmm well they should be labled some way. You will have a ground, signal, and a power. My guess would be the far right is your power then the middle is your signal wire and the left that is black would be your ground. The signal is just there to turn it on when something else gets power I'm pretty sure it can be bypassed by just grounding it which would make the rlay switch fully depend on you turning it on and off. This would allow you to turn the lights on and off if the truck is not running.

 

This maybe a no brainer but is there anyway you can chase the blue wires to there connection points. Obviously the black is ground so if you could figure one of the others then you will know exactly what order they fall in. Then it's just a matter of splicing into the blue wires

 

Thank you! That is some good advice.

 

Thread jack #2...and reviving rather than re-threading to avoid the inevitable forum ...

My question is this: In all the wiring diagrams I notice that the off road lights themselves have a solo ground wire. Can you splice and combine a ground wire similar to the power wires shown in several of the diagrams?

I have had issues with my Hella 500's cutting out with my engine off, and inconsistent operation of the lights with the engine running. My suspicion is the ground wiring, but I'm open to suggestions.

Just installed a new AGM battery, and had a successful alternator diagnostic, so no issues with power.

Also, the circuit is wired with a 30 amp relay, using an OTRATTW switch from the dash.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions...

 

I'd suggest bringing ground all the way back to the battery instead. Splicing into existing ground wires to carry loads isn't a good idea unless the wire you are splicing into is rated for all the current flowing through it and once you make a practice of doing it it's hard to keep track of what's been added where and complicating any trouble shooting. Grounding to the frame us common but frames are bolted together and rust so every frame connection between the device and the battery ground becomes a possible weak connection. Any connection has contact resistance that robs voltage and reduces output, most of the time it's not a problem but you can eliminate that concern with a return ground wire the same guage as the hot lead.