1st Gen. Lunch Table - General Discussion

Oh, I'm also confused why there's multiple relays. Maybe 2 relays for 2 lights? But maybe I'm missing something. I think you could achieve with 1 relay unless load is too high.

 

You should already have fuses. As to 30w led's on stock wiring vs a separate harness with relay, that's an interesting question. Which specific LED's are you going to install?

 

One is the dim, the clogged one is the bright.

i even tried hooks and screws to pull that cap out. Its in the oven at 180* to see if i can melt it out. The website says 180, might have to go higher.

 

@Sirfive just in case you don't understand relays, which most normal people don't, this diagram I yoinked from MGI may help decipher your cluster of wires.

Start at the relays and work your way back, tracing out what everything goes to.

A relay is just a glorified 'throw' to open or close a circuit. You give it power and ground. You attach a switch with enough power coming from it to cause the 'throw' to toss the pole over.

(Seems MGI had the 85 and 86 reversed, so I've uploaded this new image to correct)

 

Ah, motorcycle and work lights, classic stuff. I'm not sure I have good advice on this one, don't know anything about stock electrical systems for a motorcyle but it stands to reason that a relay could be needed if the switch wires are small, even for 30w.

 

Thanks shifty, i understand relays, i dont understand how or why these ballasts are pumping out 23kv.

bumped the oven up to 200. Plastics at 152*

 

Thanks dave, i imaging the aftermarket relays and chunky wire are to feed the hids. But the work lights wires are smaller.

 

HID needs high voltage to ignite, HID ballasts crank up the voltage (much lower current) to achive the arc needed.

Relays could be just for the HID's but hard to know what the stock wiring supports and/or whether it's fused. If it were a truck we'd know it's fused but if you don't know, probably safest to employ the services of a relay if the +12v is already ripe for picking.

 

Thanks guys, ya’ll are the real heros.

crisis averted.

I’ll doctor these and can use those work lights as truck lights or something.

 

Shiner bock is the key.

 

You guys smart enough to gimme servos and eyebrows?

 

My guess is your wiring is something like this assuming it's a 5-pin relay (could be 4-pin), except you have an extra relay+ballast+headlight cloned on.
It's oversimplified; the switch clearly needs a (fused) supply of power from somewhere. Likewise, there should be a fuse/breaker on the line from battery to the relay.

To those last points, I would carefully check the supply line for fuses or a relay unless you like fire risks. Consider cleaning up the wires and trimming down to one relay.

And this extra comment is for everyone else who may be interested how relays work. Our cars are full of them, and relays like this are used in all kinds of automotive applications, everything from controlling alarm functions like remote start or power windows to Dave's tag light disable. Basically, when the switch in this picture gets turned on, the red line to the relay engages the coil, which acts like a magnet, pulling the green bar away from 87a (nothing) and onto 87, which completes the circuit allowing battery power to flow over to the ballast. The sole purpose of the relay is to take a circuit from broken to connected, using the little coil.

 

@shifty`
Why is the switch in the diagram, attached to a ground and the relay? I would think the switch would be attached to 12V, so it can deliver 12V to the relay?

 

On my way to or from braselton, ga i’d like to buy you a beer, shifty.

dave, lemme know if you ever pass through tx. Beer on me.

really applies to all of you. Everyone here, and the majority of the banned, since ive been here, are good people.

 

Prolly meant pos.

but i only know which prong does what on a relay with either a diagram on the relay or a test. I think some english cars switched ground?

and i remember something about fogs or drl switching grounds?

 

Ground switched is kind of a nice way to go, if you don't need the switch to illuminate when on. I kinda prefer ground switching, it makes the switch side simpler and lets you keep all the power on the relay side of things.

Sad but true, I have a switch-pros in my Tacoma even though I love relays, because, simpler.

Even sadder, I have 0 circuits hooked up to a switch-pros right now And not a single relay in any vehicle outside of the one for the DIR which is just breaking signal rather than directing power.

And with that, off I go to USPS to deliver 25 more DIR to Tacoma owners across the country

 

Sorry, didnt mean to derail the elon talk. I think blunderfoot is spot on about his and solar freakin roadways projects. Its overhyped, and the ‘game changers’ never come. Hyperloop wont work, lol @ the boring co’s LA tunnels, ev’s only work for city folk, and spacex is equally expensive, icbm trajectory spaceflight is stupid and wasteful, and he’s polluting the final frontier with those micro sattelite things he’s been helping launch. As a figure, f him and feed him fish heads. As a person, he’s just winging it like the rest of us. Better to funnel the hate towards the people who should know better.

 

Ok, so it's ground switched, I knew that was possible. Now I wonder how the coil in the relay pulls the lever when it's only attached to grounds?
The switchpros is pretty awesome - the programming and the clean simplicity. I was just looking at enclosures/terminal boxes for the + connections, If I were to do it again, I would probably do that rather than a terminal bar on a mount. I have 4 of 8 hooked up to lights, 2 spots spoken for and two I'm playing with what to do...

 

Ground switched when not "on" would float the ground so the relay coil has +12v and nothing. Same as disconnecting the negative terminal on your battery. The +12v has to be relative to ground to trigger the coil, current has to flow for magnetic induction to take place. No ground, no coil, relay off.

Oh but your q was how can the relay coil fire if it doesn't have +12v on pin 86 somehow? It definitely needs that. Sorry for misunderstanding.

 

No, thank you both. What about same diagram with +12v on 85 and (-) switched (as it is) on 86? Does that get there?

 

Sole purpose of the switch is to provide enough voltage to the relay as to activate the coil, which will then close the circuit, completing it.

Using this method, you can literally feed anything from the '30' leg to the '87' leg. Maybe you want to push ground from 30->87? Maybe you only want to push 6v. but your switch is 12v, you could put 6v on the 30 post, then it doesn't matter what your switch has going.

Likewise, say you needed to create an 'either-or' circuit. Like, You have a pair of light, one red and one blue, and you always need one to be activated, but never the other. You could hook the red light to 87A, and the blue light to 87, and ... depending on whether the switch was ON or OFF, the green bar would be thrown to one or the other activating it.

There's a bajillion ways you can activate these things. You can use for either power-interrupt/power-completion, or ground-interrupt/ground-completion as Dave indicated.

Relays are pretty f'n amazing.

 

I'm in. I'll be in San Antonio in early March.

 

Oh and I may've gotten one of these diagrams backwards. I don't think I did, but I might've.

I always need to look at a damn instructions for these friggin things because I never work withthem frequently enough anymore to memorize it.

And if anyone needs some basic 5-pin automotive relays, I had some listed in the sales forum for a while, the $15-20 NAPA ones, I think I was asking $20 total for four relays shipped or something stupid like that. Nobody was buying. I used to use relays a lot when doing LS swaps.

 

how long? Ive got an hour worth of kayaking, or 3-4 hours of passive tubing. But as a proper smoker, we gotta meet at a bar with an outdoors. Non smoking bars kinda suck.

 

Pretty damn cool. If I start using them I'll need a flip chart for each application so I can paint by numbers

 

Titans aux light relay was easy.


Jeeps relay was a little more involved.

 

Here is switched 12v and another switched ground.

 

Yup. And again, the only thing that ever irks me about these is they should really show a fuse or breaker inline on those power runs

Common practice I've seen is jumper to share power 30->86 or 30->85 (I can't remember which) if a ground interrupt (switched ground, w/e) and the same voltage source is used, rather than forking the line as shown.

 

I haven't tried this myself but the coil is just a coil so current can flow in either direction. However, relays employ a resistor or a diode to ensure current does not backflow through the coil. So, you would want 86 to be + and 85 to be - regardless of which is switched. A diode based relay would require that, a resistor based relay I think might now.