Ever try these headlight relays?

I'll let you know this week - I'm installing this exact kit. Although after Jeff's post I'm inclined to slice open a wire and see if it is indeed all insulation and little copper. Worst case scenario it wouldn't be hard to Frankenstein together a kit made with good components, especially with this as a guide.

I also had the same thought about re-using the old regulator as a relay box. Since I've got the rad/fan/etc out of the car now is certainly the time to get as much of the wiring done as possible.

 

I'm thinking I'd stick with the Hella mini relay box from summit. 7 Relay box is 36, relays are $5.

 

I've been looking around and this caught my eye: https://www.waytekwire.com/item/46344/Cooper-Bussmann-15303-4-0-4-Mini-Fuse-Panel-/

That can take five mini relays, has integrated fuses for each pole, and is built to be waterproof. It's popular with the 4x4 crowd, apparently. Pretty tempting.

 

Just got it today, the power wire is definitely not long enough but overall doesn't look too bad. The relays are pretty cheap as stated earlier. Looks like you will plug it directly into one of your current headlight harnesses

 

The wiring to relay coils doesn't have to be increased in size, it's the wiring to relay contacts and bulbs that should be larger...

 

I would increase wire size from battery to relay also. It will be pulling the amps to feed head lights.

 

That is the exact setup I just put on a few months ago. I did not change any of the wiring and so far have had no problems.

 

I bought that kit and installed it. Yes it works fine now and is cheap, but it is cheap. I would not count on the relays as being waterproof. I have fabricated a jumper just in case they fail, which I suspect they will. If I had to do it again, I'd buy 2 quality waterproof relay/sockets with O-rings and minimum 12 gauge pigtails and just splice everything together with some wire. It's not difficult (and you only need 4 prong relays, not 5, but either will work). I hate to slam a good deal, but this is definitely fabricated with cheap labor. However, it's almost worth the new headlight connectors.

 

Okay, I pulled a few pins to look at the wire gauge and I wasn't very impressed. As I started mapping it out I got a bit confused though. This is what I came up with from looking at the wiring of the two sockets:



Forgive the shorthand - anything that says "input from pass h/l" means that's coming in from the factory harness. I'm definitely not a sparky by any means, but I don't quite understand how this works. Turn on low beams, 12+ goes to pin 86 on relay 2, closes the coil sending 12v out pin 87, lighting the low beams on the headlights through the relay.

Switch to high beams, that would put 12v+ on pin 85 on relay 1 which should be ground, and pin 86 is grounded. 12v+ in for pin 30 on relay 1 will be fed by pin 87a on relay 2 since that will be closed thanks to the high beam switch. After writing all that out, I guess they're just wiring the coil backwards on relay 1... not sure why they wouldn't swap pins 85 and 86 on relay 1 and run the coil normally though. They're already sharing the ground and daisy chaining power so there shouldn't be any more wires to run. What am I missing?