TeamSwift

The article exists to document why version 2.0 needed to be posted. The headlight mod described here succeeds in brightening the headlights, but also introduces electrical switching problems as well. The intent with this mod was to do it as efficiently as possible with a minimum of parts. Since this install, I've sat down and reengineered a better headlight wiring scheme from the ground up. More info about this will be provide here when the article is written.


This post was originally written in 2007

Last summer I decided to finally fix the headlight wiring in my car. For the longest time, the vehicle had a noticably dimmer passenger side headlight. Rather than try and nurse the broken factory wiring, I decided to rewire the headlights with fatter wire, and hook them up so they draw power straight from the battery. Relays control the switching, and fuses are in the right place to protect everything.

If you're doing this mod to a vehicle with DRLs, I'd recommend disabling them, otherwise the DRL system will trigger your newly installed relays, and run the headlights at full brightness all the time.

Supplies
A pair of 30 amp relays, 20 amp fuses, fuseholders, and some scrap 10 gauge wire (I didn't end up using any of the crimp connectors pictured)


Getting Started
Start by disconnecting the battery, and removing the coolant reservoir. This pic also shows the washer fluid reservoir removed, but it shouldn't get in the way (mine was removed for weight reduction, not wiring access)


The driver's side headlight is now unplugged, and the first of the it's wires is cut and soldered to supply power to the relay coils:


Label your relay sockets so you know which one controls the high beams, and which one controls the low beams:


Over on the passenger side, the head socket is completely severed, and the factory wiring is terminated by bending the wires over and heatshrinking them:


You should now have two severed headlight sockets with short stubs of wire attached to them (note if your old sockets are melted, it's time to get new ones):


New 10 ga wire is now soldered to the socket (this one is for the passenger side, so each wire is a few feet long):


The connections are now heatshrinked:


Finally they're loomed, sealed with electrical tape, and secured with a ziptie:



The new wire is installed into the headlight, and routed under the upper rad support. Be sure to leave enough wire slack so you can service the headlights:


Once the wire is pulled through, the wires should be traced and labeled:


Another set of wires is made up for the driver's side:


The ring terminal here gets bolted to the positive battery terminal, two weatherproof fuse holders each contain a 20 amp fuse (each fuse protects a pair of headlamps running in parallel). The fuse holder terminates at the relay sockets:



Now everything is hooked up (and left hanging off the side of the car JVS-style )


First test. The engine is started, and the lights are turned on. Both headlights are white, and the voltmeter measurement from both headlight sockets is 14 volts. Success!


Time to tuck everything away and clean up the job:


Self tapping screw keep the relays in place:


Everything's in!


After everything was put in place, I noticed a bug with the system. If the high beams are engaged, they stay locked on, even after power to the relay should have been disconnected. They only reset after the headlights are killed, and the low beams are turned back on. I suspect I'm getting some kind of weird ground loop situtuation. The relays are still being powered by the factory switched ground system, which may still be suffering from other wiring defects. The car pictured in this thread is the second vehicle I've done this mod to, and both vehicles suffered from this highbeam bug. I did discover through experimenting that if a diode is soldered in series with one of the relay coil wires, that the high beams will behave normally. Polarity didn't matter either .

_________________

So you have +12v to one side of the coils and the other sides of the coils are grounded through the headlight switch? And once the highbeams are on, they stay on until the switch is completely off? The only way the highbeams could stay on is if the headlight switch was still grounding the relay. I'd be poking around with a multimeter. Something isn't right.

I've added headlight relays to a couple of vehicles and experienced no bugs, but they both had switched positive lights.

No wiring diagram? You made such nice ones for the DRL thread.

_________________
1994 Metro - MPH project (getting a DOHC G13B)
1994 Metro - MPG project (getting an XFi G10)
1992 Swift - Parts car (gone)
1991 Swift - Parts car (gone)
1990 Swift - Parts car
1997 Metro - Parts car (gone)
1993 Metro - Parts car
1989 Swift GTi - Parts car
1998 Metro - Parts car

Hey, guys that's a great mod. Any chance any of you guys can make a kit for me. Ill be paying you fairly. I just dnt have time to do this, please please. Thanks a lot for cönsidering

as for a kit i believe someone was going to do it that included that and bulbs or something like that its on here somewhere. maybe jard was doing it.

here it is:
Oh please Whattheeee, quit praising my delivery skils or anything else for that matter, otherwise ppl will start to think you owe me a shitload of cash or worse....that we're both gays!

Actually I got several ppl asking me for the kit, but they backed off after I told them I was asking $120CAD shipping included for the kit. You see them looking very interested but all of sudden they start to suffer strange illness that require expensive $urgery and it will bleed their wallet to death...haem.. Is it so difficult to simply say: "That's fine bud, I'm not interested after all"
Anyway, I intended to include two (2) H3 100w fog bulbs and two (2) 80/100 H4 bulbs with the harness. Now you can make the count:
2x 100w bulbs + 2x 80/100w bulbs + 6 feets 12GA. brand new wiring + 1x 45 amp fuse w/fuse holder + 2x 55 amp bosch relay + 2 headlight plugs + 1 1/2 hrs of labour + free shipping anywhere in canada = ??? not much I guess.

Bottom line is: My vert still has the powerfulest lighting in the east coast
from jardamuth under this category do a search it will come up but that should cover it.

_________________
trying to go turbo but the wife thinks it will cost too much for my 93 metro so now i have to "wheel & deal" my way there, any help would be great.

If may I ask, 'cos it's difficult to understand truly this mod.

Is it something like this?


Cos I've done it but used 10A fuses. The melted in a week or so. I see that
you used 20A fuses.....
OOOO......oooo. I understand now.... 'Cos this mod connects low and high beam in series......

Is this the wiring diagram?
How do you ground the bulbs (the right is loomed as far as to the left fillament)?

_________________
Extreme racing team

First - nothing is connected in series in that diagram
Second - that diagram doesn't match the wiring on your car.

Your car has the positive fused and connected directly to the headlamp, which on the diagram is shown as ground.

I may be using the wrong term: parallel vs series.
Any way....

I was asking if the relays cut the 12v feed from the battery to the headlamp..
using the original ground wires for the lights ( red and red/white) - low and high

What so ever........
Just need a diagram to understand more clearly. Where does, in this mod,
headlamps are grounded - on chassis or......?

_________________
Extreme racing team

i used that diagram to wire my headlights, works fine.

If you're referring to the diagram posted by Mr. Ness on Nov 26 - I would say - LOOK AGAIN - you're maybe mistaken.

#1 - on those relays the coil is connected between pins 85 & 86 - in the diagram provided pin 85 is connected to ground and pin 86 to the original lead from the combo switch, which on a Swift (Mk2/3) is connected to ground - so #1 - the coil will NEVER be energized.

#2 - pin 30 is common, pin 87 is normally open - if the coil is never energized those contacts never close - so #2 - the contacts will NEVER close.

If the contacts never close, +12V is never applied to the lamp filaments so lamp the lamps NEVER light.

Are you SURE that's the diagram you used?

@Mr Ness

Using your diagram - disconnect pin 85 of the relay from ground and wire it to +12V (pin 30 in the diagram) - and you'll be good to go.

I've previous;y used that diagram and making the same:
constant 12v to 85 and 86 pins hooked to the original wires, cos swifts are ground switche lights.

So I have to ground to headlamp premanently ot chassis, am I?

_________________
Extreme racing team

Mr. Ness - if you don't want to ground the lights to the chassis, you'll need to wire pin 30 on the relay to ground and leave the lamp common wired to +12V.

Of course this will mean that - you cannot wire pin 85 to pin 30 as per my previous post - you'll have to find a separate +12 feed for it.

Only reason I'm not redoing the entire diagram is I'm on the road and have limited access to the net, and my usual resources.

heres how i wired it up, using the stock left hand headlight plug.



the blue lines are what fordem said wireing pin 85 to a + source rather then ground .

That's basically the scheme I used, not sure what the white with blue stripe wires are though. I also wired the driving lights to the high beam relay so when I click off the high beams the driving lights go off too. I also have a switch on the dash for the driving lights so they can be used with the high beams or not at all.

Q

I know something is still buggered with the factory side of the wiring. I think I'm gonna replace the wiring all the way up to the combo switch in the steering column. In the process, the whole lighting circuit would be converted to a switched positive system.

I did sketch a diagram on a scrap of paper, but I found that didn't need it due to the simplicity of the wiring.


To the person asking about grounding, my wiring is grounded right to the negative battery terminal.

_________________

That's I wanted to know(grounding), 'cos I grounded my headlight with the parking lights - there is a bolt on each side of inner fenders - battery is also grounded there. I'd prefer using them rather then directly attached to the battery - don't think ts a good idea.
I've previously done this mod but when I switch them off it makes my cd player "reBOOT" Also melted fuses when driving on high beams.
I had to revert back to the original wiring.

We're "talking" the same things, but don't uderstand each other

WE DO NOW.!;-)

_________________
Extreme racing team

Done!
But now I have strange fault in the wiring.
When I disconnect the ground for the left headlight it still glows...Not as strong as when grounded. Switch to High Beams it stops glowing. Back to low beams - left shi**y yellowish, the right lisht at full power. It kinda takes ground from the right headlamp... If I discontect the right headlight the left stops to glow also. I'll take pictures and show exactly whats the deal...

If someone has this happened to him.... please let me know

_________________
Extreme racing team

You'll get stuff like that with bad grounds - here why.

Lamp #1 isn't properly grounded - so you get power through filament #1 (could be high or low beam doesn't really matter) and instead of going to ground through the common terminal the current flows through filament #2 through the loom to lamp #2 (which is connected in parallel), through filament #2 to ground.

This also happens with the rear lamp clusters and can be very noticeable at night when it will cause tail lamps to vary in brightness and sometimes go out altogether as the indicators flash.

hey i just did a relay conversion in my Mk1. look at photo down the page to see how to do a relay conversion with ground switched headlights. it easy and the only wires that need running are a few short ground cables. all the rest of the wiring is utilized.

The relays are fed constant 12v+ to terminal 85 or 86 by tapping into the headlight power wire. The ground switched wires for each beam connects to 85 or 86 (whichever one wasn't used for the 12v+)

terminal 87 or 30 is connected with 12 gauge wire to a clean secure ground.
the corresponding ground wire for each beam is connected to terminal 87 or 30 (whichever one wasn't used for the 12 gauge ground) on the corresponding relay)

when the hi or low beam switch is turned on, it grounds the relays, closing them, grounding out the corresponding beam straight to the chassis thru 12 gauge wire.

this also saves the switch contacts and wiring connectors from burning up, all they are powering is relay coils now. This is even more important if you use higher wattage bulbs which could possibly (probably) finish off the switch contacts and leave you stranded with no lights.

The stock 12v+ wire is still used here to power the headlights, as i have found it sufficient. Even under load there is still 14.2 volts at the connectors now as opposed to 12.4

_________________
Cheers
-Ben

Nice job Ben

Rather than feeding the relays (85 or 86) from the headlight circuit, you might want to take it from the switched ignition or accessory feed instead.

Here's why - the headlights are individually fused - left & right - if there's a short circuit supposedly one fuse blows and the other side will still light, but - if that happens to be the side that you're using to feed the relays - then the relays lose their feed and drop out and both headlights go out.

Switch the lamps on and pull the headlight fuses one by one - you'll see what I mean.

An additional benefit of doing it this way - when you switch the ignition off - you kill the feed to the relays and the lights go off - no more forgetting the headlights on and draining the battery.

hey fordem, I see what you mean, but i have relays on both headlamps

so if one goes out the other will keep going.

_________________
Cheers
-Ben

You think so? Did you pull the fuses?

Assuming you have one relay per headlamp, it means the high beam relay is fed from one side, and the low beam relay is fed from the other - so depending on which set of beams you're using when which fuse blows, you still lose both lamps.

On the other hand - if you're using four relays - two per side - you're good to go

yeah I am using 4 relays, 2 on each side of the car

_________________
Cheers
-Ben

Thanks for the diagram, i use it with a combo switch that Beatswift sell to me and works excellent. I tried with the old combo switch and suffer the same problem that Lithan has...

geopat, this work flawless on my Suzuki. Just had to play with the wires so it that the low beam and high beam were bright.

_________________
Love the way the West coast feels.

heh,
me and pat (geopat) did this to my swift today, i'll go for a drive when its darker out and test it out
-amer

_________________
93 Swift GT White 3Tech cams, Sandro's chip, Lightned flywheel, Genie exhaust, Cultus header, Intrax springs.
02 Aerio 2.3 swap Wife's car