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Dan M
Dodge Dakota
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9/12/2007
22:43:17
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 Subject: accessory wiring
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Message:
I'm looking to add some after market off road lights to the yakima rack on my leer shell. Since I know very little about electrical wiring and systems I'm hoping someone here can point me in the right direction.
I don't want to wire the lights directly to the battery. sure it will work but it looks ugly and unprofessional. I am looking at adding 4 lights. 2 on front of rack facing forward and 2 on back facing behind vehicle.
Should I splice in to the wiring for the tail lights? Should I look at finding an in-line connector to plug into the factory tail light wiring? Should I get one of those add-a-fuse fuses where it plugs into the factory fuse panel in cab and has a connector sticking up to wire a terminal.
should I use a relay?
I know i need to make sure the wiring is the proper gauge to handle the power requirements for the lights.
I want either key-on or parking lights on for the off road lights to work.
Obviously I need to wire in a switch. Any locations in cab better or easier to install than others? I'm thinking a double switch so I can control the front set and back set independently.
I've been looking over the 12 volt website.
I know some of you have done this kind of wiring, how did you do it and why? Would you change anything after the fact?
This is on an 02 QC 4x4 with leer fiberglass shell with yakima roof rack. And I have 2 lights in the shell (one in front by window which is over my tool box and one at the rear by the tailgate) which are wired to the parking lights. This was included and done by the shop that I purchased the shell from.
- Dan M
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OBIO3
Dodge Dakota
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9/13/2007
23:52:29
| RE: accessory wiring
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For the best lights, use a relay direct off the battery and wire the relay activation post to a switch and from there to where you want as the relay activator uses very little juice.
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shadetree
Dodge Dakota
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9/14/2007
13:56:45
| RE: accessory wiring
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Message:
Listen to OBIO3 and use a relay possibly 2 if you are running 2 pairs of lights. I depends on how many amps the lights will draw. If you tie directly into the tail lights you will burn your headlight switch up and probably smoke the wiring to. However a relay only requires a small fraction of the power to operate because all your powering basically is an electro magnet and not the light itself and wont harm the head light switch. However I would check with you inspection station before hand to make sure it will still pass inspection lol cause they failed mine when I took it for having more than 1 set of aftermarket lights.
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Jimmy9190
Dodge Dakota
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9/14/2007
21:28:20
|  RE: accessory wiring
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Message:
Don't use the tail light wiring to power the off road lights. It won't have enough current or voltage and doing so will damage the lighting system on your truck. One way to wire this would be to use relays and a toggle switch. Relays take less than half an amp of current to energize, but they can switch up to about 30 amps of current draw. Like Shadetree says, you might need 2 relays, depending on how much current each pair of lights will draw. I'd use one relay for each pair, just to be on the safe side. If you want to use the headlight switch to turn on the lights, that's simple enough. Use a Bosch 30 amp relay. Find the wire that has 12 volts only when the parking lights are turned on. You could find this wire at any one of the parking lights or behind the headlight switch. At the switch the wire on your Dakota should be black with a yellow stripe. Tap into that wire and connect it to terminal 86 on the relay. Terminal 85 goes to a good ground. Terminal 87 would go to battery 12 volts positive. Terminal 30 would go to the positive wires on the lights. Then just ground the ground wires on the lights to a good clean solid ground. Use one relay wired this way for each pair of lights and the lights should work fine. Do not use fuse taps at the fuse box. Lights draw a lot of current and need to get their power straight from the battery. For each relay/pair of lights, put in a fuse in the power wire from the battery, no less than 10 inches from the battery positive terminal. Use the same amperage fuse as what the lights are rated or that comes with the lights. Doing so will help to prevent any possibility of fire hazard in case of a short in the lights or their wiring. Use at least the same gauge of wiring that comes with the lights. I would think 10-12 gauge would be fine.
A good way to trigger the system would be to add a toggle or rocker switch in the dash, in series in the positive parking light wire that controls the relays. That way, when you wanted to only use your regular parking lights and headlights, you can just turn off the toggle switch. Without the switch, the off road lights would be on any time the parking lights were on.
If you wire it as an ignition key-on system, just substitute the ignition wire in place of the parking light wire. You could still interrupt the relay side of the ignition with a toggle and get the same control when you did not want the off road lights on. The ignition wire is under the steering column in the wire harness going to the ignition switch. The wire should be dark blue, about 14 gauge.
Hope this might help. Let us know how it turns out.
Jimmy
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Hollis
Dodge Dakota
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9/17/2007
22:41:11
| RE: accessory wiring
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Listen to Jimmy9190. For a good understanding of how a relay works, go here:
home.howstuffworks.com/relay.htm
Or, there are many other sites decribing this and other simple electronic components. When you understand how and why, everything will be much easier.
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Jimmy9190
Dodge Dakota
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9/17/2007
22:53:32
| RE: accessory wiring
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Correction...the fuses for the power wires to the relays should be no MORE than 8-10 inches from the battery positive post. What I used to do was connect one end of the fuse holder to the power wire and connect the other end of the fuse holder to the battery post. The purpose is that if the wire ever had a short, it would just blow the fuse rather than cause a fire.
Jimmy
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