Spotlight woes

Posted: Sun Feb 29, 2004 11:24 am

Ok, having read these posts.. i have:

1. loom ready to go - check
2. spotties mounted - check
3. NFI whether my car is negative or positive switching, and which wire in the back of the headlight is highbeam - check!!

Blueys 84 Hilux was negatively switched, so i make the educated guess that an 86 4Runner, being based on the hilux with a st wagon body would be negatively switched aswell. Having looked at his highly technical drawing of the plug into the light, im totaly confused about which wire is the highbeam.. car stereos are easy, lights it would appear, are not!

Help please... im afraid of the dark Laughing

Joined: 09 Nov 2002 Location: Traralgon Vic Aust.

4runner should be Neg switching!!!

Joined: 31 Mar 2003 Location: Brisbane or 169.254.243.241

99% of civilian, production cars are neg earth, pos earth is normally a military thing

If you have yet to find the hot wire across the back of the headlight
the easiest way is to use a multimeter and probe the back of the lights with the high beam on, and then work out the earth on the light then you should be sweet

PM me or post here for more details

Posted: Sun Feb 29, 2004 7:48 pm

Ahh ok.. so the whole negative/positive swtiching thing ties with negative/positive earth... ok that makes a bit more sense =}

Cheers guys.

Joined: 15 Apr 2003 Location: Somewhere in Australia.......

For a fail safe method just grab the pos and neg of the high beam and run this to your spottie relay. Use your spottie switch it switch either the pos or the neg wire. To easy.

Joined: 24 Aug 2003 Location: Launceston

my drawing was shit huh Very Happy

positive or negative switching basically is what voltage (ground or +12V) is used to turn light on.

running spotties from headlight wires (no relays) might mean dimmer lights i reckon.
to work out what wires does what check out manual (3 different wire colours) and use multimeter to check out actual voltages for diffrent lights on/off

Joined: 25 Oct 2003 Location: Melbourne Australia

Goodsy wrote:

For a fail safe method just grab the pos and neg of the high beam and run this to your spottie relay. Use your spottie switch it switch either the pos or the neg wire. To easy.

Goodsy is right. What you do is hook up to both wires from the high beam, and use these to trip the relay that will run your spotlights.

However, you interrupt one of these wires and run it up to a switch in the cabin. It doesn't really matter which one, might as well make it the -ve.

You still have to run a good +12V wire to the relay to actually run the spotties.

Jason

Posted: Mon Mar 01, 2004 6:56 pm

I have the loom made up that area54 posted a circuit diagram for.. with relay, fuses, etc etc.. i just needed a feed line from lights --> switch --> relay.

Will get multimeter out on w/e and work it out, cheers!

Joined: 09 Nov 2002 Location: Traralgon Vic Aust.

Goodsy wrote:

For a fail safe method just grab the pos and neg of the high beam and run this to your spottie relay. Use your spottie switch it switch either the pos or the neg wire. To easy.

It actually has nothing to do with neg or pos ground as pos ground vehicles went out with straw hats!!! On pos switched headlights the neg is constant at the light and the pos supply is switched. On neg switched headlights the pos is constant and the neg is switched by the dipswitch.
Constant pos and switched high beam ground will be the two outer pins in the headlight plug.

Hope this don't create anymore confusion!!!

Joined: 24 Aug 2003 Location: Launceston

sorry about focus Laughing

black wire = common of lights (ground for pos switch, +12 volts for neg switch)

red = low beam

green = high beam

oh yeah, looking into back of connector as is connected to headlight