Headlights, remote start, and such

[Archangel]

Well, now that I have a 3G alternator in my car, I can add some more current consuming devices without draining my battery.

1) headlights - I'm sick of having 4 of them, but only being able to use 2 cause of the urban area traffic regulations. I noticed that the plugs for the high beams are the same as the ones for the low beams, but instead of 3 terminals they are filled with only two - I have the crazy idea of adding them the missing terminals, connecting them to the low beams terminals in the low beam plugs, and then replacing the two high beam lights with a pair of low- beams. The high beams lamps themselves will go behind the grill, on an accesory bar in my pushbars, or anywhere else I find a good place for them, and will only work when supposed to. So in the end I'll have 4 headlights when running on low, and 6 when in high mode. Anything worng with my idea, or anything I might be skipping?

2) when browsing JC Whitney's site I stumbled across this set - have anyone used it, and how much work exactly is involved in it's installation? Any better suggestions? The part I love most is the 1000ft range of the remotes, this way I can start my car from my balcony on the 5th floor and have the engine a good warmup time before I rush it into the race that is morning traffic

[Blaze86Vic]

That kit only works with Fords that are equiped with PATs keys. New vehicles.

Natehawk has a remote start on his car. Though he had it done. The guy I work with that has the 350 S10 has remote start, but again he had someone else do it.

[gadget73]

Going to need to relay the lights. The switch can't handle that kind of load. I'd probably do something like a lo-medium-high type thing. low would be stock 2 lamps, med would be 4 low beams, high would be standard 4 high beams.

[Archangel]

Hold on for a moment, Thaine, are you telling me that the low beam lamps actually have high beams in them too? So in that case I can just swap the high beamed ones with low beams and do the harness splicing, and it should be fine, right? I mean if the switch handles 4 high beams it should be able to handle 4 lows too... About the relayed harness - what kind of relays do I need for that? A wiring diagram would be of great help too (haven't taken that class yet), so if someone's bored and would like to gimme a hand with that one it would be greatly appreciated

[Blaze86Vic]

That is correct, the high beam lights have both low and high.

[Chachi]

First don’t buy junk electronics from JC Whitney. Second because a remote starter has to do with ignition wires you don’t generally want to do it yourself unless you’ve done them before. If you screw up you may make your car unable to start and run. And third if you get a remote start get a good name like DEI.

[gadget73]

I'm not sure if our high beams have both filaments, but you can buy two low beam bulbs and get the same effect. I believe you'd need an SPST relay. Pete can probably hook you up with a diagram. I could wire it but I can't explain the process. Its not very hard really. SPST relays really only have 4 wires. A battery in lead, a trigger (goes to the stock headlight wiring up to the switch) and an output wire. Oh, and a ground for the coil. Not really complex stuff but I have a complete inability to draw schematics.

[85crownHPP]

That is correct, the high beam lights have both low and high.

you mean the low beam lamps have low and high

[Archangel]

Chachi, mu igntion wires are spliced already, did it on Friday - now I can leave my car running full power (engine, blower, radio, everything) while locking it and going to do stuff, kinde like the 'pit-stop' mode, but to start the car and obviously to drive I still need to have the key in.

Blaze & Pete, when the switch is set at 'high' the high-beams-only lamps seem to be brigher than the low-and-high ones, is there really some difference in their power, or it's just the way I perceive them?

Gadget, I laready have the relay harness in the car, fabbed it today after work - I have four relays (one for high and one for low on each side), wires from the battery to each relay (lead), dual output wires for the headlights (so the each relay controls two lights), an individual ground wire for each headlight (from the headlight to the battery's negative terminal. Each relay is controled by the headlight swith, on each side of the car both black wires (high beams) go to one relay, and the red wire (low beams) goes to the other relay - these are the triggers I guess, to the other terminal of the 'master' circuits I have hooked up the stock green wire tha was initailly plugged into the headlights. All battery to relay wires are 10-gauge snakes, all the others are 14-gauge , and the stock ones are 16-gauge.

But here comes the funky part - when I turn the high beams on I lose the low ones, when I switch back to low the high won't turn off Shutting off the headlighst and turning them on again fixes the situation, until I go high beams again. Also when on low all my headlighst light up, the outer ones normally and the inner ones really weak. The voltage across the high-beam portion of the low-beam lamps reads aroud 3-4V, the othe part still gets 12V. The trigger wires for the master circuits on the high beam relays read zero volts (as they should), but the gounds (green wires from the stock harness) give me like 4-5V - WTF? Also if I disconnect the high-beam wires from the low-beam lapms when the headlights are on 'low' the lamp loses brightness - still measures 12.XX volts (around 10 with the stock wiring), but I guess the amps drop.

There's some ghost in the machine, can't explain it otherwise... I'm gonna go now and disconnect the stock green wires from the relays and use the terminals to ground the coils, see if that will help. Fun time :evil:

[Blaze86Vic]

I don't think there is a difference, but I really don't know, just guessing.

[Archangel]

Well, I fixed it, kinda - grounded the coils in the relays, as a result of which I lost high beams completely. For whatever reason the green stock wires are the one who carry the current now, the black wires get nothing at all. But that's only with the switch set to "high", on "low" neither the black, nor the green wires are live. So I swapped the black and the green wire for the 'high" relay trigger and it works fine now. I still get a little glow in the inner lamps (high beams), but the interesing part is that it's not due to a relay failure, but to some voltage leak from the low-beam lamps. They're pretty old though, can age and extesnive use be an explanation for such an internal voltage leak? Weird things going on...

[gadget73]

You'll need to keep the grounds connected to the bulb itself. Actually if you want it to be totally right, the high beam (inner bulb) relay will run both the inner bulb and the high beam filament of the outer bulb. The other relay runs the low beam filament in the outer bulb.

[gadget73]

found this as a link off LoL. Might be of some use.

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/t...ys/relays.html

[Archangel]

Gadget, what I did was run 8 grounds altogether - one per headlight (4), and one per relay (again 4). When I did that for some reason I got power on the green wires from the stock harness, the black ones went dead. Don't know how or why that is, but when I hooked up these green wires to the relays everything worked just fine. Then last night I crashed the car, and I have't looked at the harness yet, but I hope it's still okay.

[Grand Marquis GT]

Crashed? Are you ok?