SoloRacer

I just received my full boat light kit from Ice Shark and the quality of both the man and the kit was beyond my expectations. I also purchased a set of Euro driving lights and was wondering about wiring them. I noticed in the light kit instructions that Mr. Shark wisely included a spare power supply for use to wiring driving/fog lights. I'm wondering if anyone can give me detailed instructions - including an additional parts list - for wiring the euro lights using the additional power supply. Thx.

turbo944

Paragon Products sells a kit to add the Euro Lights to your car. Basically it was putting them in and splicing a wire into the existing high beam wire for your main lights. Was like $15, IIRC.....

I'll see if I can dig out the instructions tomorrow if you still need them...

Danno

I just hooked up the driving-lights in the Euro package to a relay. The power to that relay comes directly from the alternator. Then to turn on the relay, it's activated by the high-beam signal tapped off the back of the headlights. This was the shortest amount of wiring I could run.

So whenever I have my high-beams on, the driving-lights go on as well. With the headlights down, and I pull back the stalk to flash, both the fog- and driving-lights flash (guess the high-beams are still going on with the headlights down).

shortyboy

is there a kit to use euro fog lights w/o headlights?like a kit to adapt the plugs where the headlights used to go,to the euro lights?just wondering because ive converted to a vented nose panel w/o headlights and ill be purchasing euro lenses soon.thanx

turbo944

Mine work the same way Danno In fact, if you have the headlights on and pull back to flash, you get all 4 lights in the Euro lights on (see beginning of my video posted a while back) and the high beams. Makes people sit up and take notice at night....hehe

Shortyboy, as once you tap in on them, you are using the same, if you just removed your headlights and know where that wiring is that went to them (the high beam wire) you could just tap into that source and run them from there since you won't have the motor come on or the headlights raising or anything. Your fogs for "low beam" won't be of much use as low beams though. Don't know if the high beams would be much better as those seem to concentrate it pretty well straight ahead.

MitchB

OZ951 has a good article on his website

http://www.oz951.com/public/usefularticles.htm

Look at the "foglight modification" tab...

IceShark

Solo, the first thing you have to decide is how you want the driving lights to operate. One thing you must keep in mind when making this decision is that those driving lights are a very bright, concentrated pencil beam. You can't use them without bothering other drivers just like your main high beams. This is especially true if you run 100 watt bulbs in them. I got flashed quite a few times in 12 noon sunlight when I first tried to use them as day running lights.

So you can go the simple route and tie the relay trigger to the high beams and they will mimic. Or you can go with more complicated switching as explained in the write-up Brian Young posted. I have my driving lights wired so they will mimic the high beams (both the fogs and driving will light up on the flash to pass, pull the stalk back), or be independently turned on as long as at least the parking lights are on. After years of operation I always leave the switch in the position that mimics the high beams so you may just want to go the simple wiring route and hard wire the trigger to the high beam wiring.

The trickey part in rewiring is to get some good relays. You can get some cheap ones from the local auto parts store, gob on some silicone RTV over the base and terminals to keep out moisture and just plan on replacing the relay every couple years - depending on how often you use the lights. The wear item in the relay are the contacts inside it. The contacts in cheap relays do not have as many on/off cycles in their design life and if you get moisture up in there through the base the life will really drop. I do have some extra water proof 40 amp heavy duty relays, bases and terminals that you see in the headlight harness. You can have a kit for $15 plus whatever USPS wants to ship it, which shouldn't be much.

Quantity of additional materials depends on how you want the lights to work but you will need some heavy #10 gauge to run from the relay down to the lights. You also want to change out the existing ground in the lights to 10 gauge. 25 feet of wire should probably do it. And you want a short piece of #10 from the spare power pig tail to the relay. And you need an inline fuse in the power line right after the pig tail (most of the local auto stores should have these by Littelfuse or Bussman).

For the relay trigger wire and ground some #16 gauge, or so, will work fine. Then get a few 1/4" female spade connectors, some parallel splices, silicone RTV to seal, and some heat shrink. With exception of the tinned fine strand wire, you can probably get most of this in passing quality levels from the local hardware store.

That is a thumbnail of what you need. I would stear clear of the wiring kits that are sold with the combo fog/driving lenses because the main power wires are too thin to run 100 watt bulbs and will drop too much voltage especially on the run over to the right lens.