51 replies to this topic

[scubiecraig]

Chris, on 20 February 2012 - 08:31 PM, said:

Ok, so, I've said it before. And I'll spit it out again.
You followed the guide they gave for setting it up in a pos switched car. It will not ever work if you follow that guide.

You need to go from the high beam, to the switch, from the switch, to the trigger wire on the relay. The wire from the relay you have grounded to the fender bolt needs to go to the battery. This way when the switch is on and the high beam is on, it'll complete the circuit from negative to positive to activate the coil.
Also, the wire from the switch to a ground will not make the switch light up. Since it's neg switched it'll need to go to a positive. If the switch has an LED inside of it, it will not work at all, because they don't work on reverse polarity.
You also need to fuse everything coming from the positive on the battery. I can see you do not have a fuse on the sub wire. If that shorts out going through the firewall, you'll set your car on fire.

Positive or negative terminal? I'm assuming negative?

[Chris]

Positive. Blue and yellow coming off the relay wiring are the coil. One needs positive. One needs negative. It doesn't matter which is which, it doesn't care about polarity. But if you give the blue one positive, then the yellow one can get negative vie the high beam wire.

I'm telling ya... the hella wiring diagram is completely wrong for a neg switched car.

Edited by Chris, 20 February 2012 - 09:07 PM.

[scubiecraig]

Dude you are being so patient with me. Thank you so much, really.

[scubiecraig]

OK, so this morning I unbolted the blue ground wire on the chassis and put that to the positive terminal on the battery. So if I'm understanding you correctly, I now have to take the yellow wire from the switch, and tap that into a negative wire (aka the green wire that I have running to the high beam headlight). I think once that is done, I should be golden! Then I have to figure out why one of my hella's isn't turning on. It was working to begin with, but now it's out. I'm assuming one of my connections came loose or something. Not sure how, because I used butt connectors and I also put electrical tape around all the butt connectors to make sure everything was tidied up nicely.

Edited by scubiecraig, 21 February 2012 - 12:19 PM.

[2point5RS_Dan]

Check your connections and your grounds. If it isn't grounded completely it wont come on.

Green is your tap on the headlight, yellow goes to your switch, blue to the battery. I remember it now finally.

[scubiecraig]

So frustrated right now. Had them working, except the 1. Tapped the green wire to the yellow wire as suggested. Still, 1 hella doesn't come on. Checked connections the best I could, and re-did a connection. Tested. No go. I swapped bulbs to make sure I didn't have a faulty bulb. No go. So then, after I did that, inexplicably the same thing happened to me Dan as it did to you... when I turned the car off, the Hellas (well, the 1 working Hella lol) stays on. For the time being, I've disconnected the damn things so they aren't receiving power. I also am worried about hacking up my oem wiring harness anymore... it's looking kind of Frankensteinish right now and I may need to get a new high beam headlight connection at NAPA or something.

I'm going to see if the Chris Apkarian can help me out at some point. I want working Hella's and a clean/professional install that's safe.

[Chris]

That's really weird, I wonder if for some reason the newer cars ground the headlights out when the car is off. I'm thinking maybe the headlight is NC, and receives power to turn the light off. That way if the relay or wiring fails, you don't lose headlights. But that's just a guess seeing as two people have had the same problem.
The wiring on my legacy is slightly hacked up because I have projectors, but I'll check out of curiosity if that's the case.

If it is, it' not a hard fix, just weird I've never heard anything of it before.

I'd be interested to take a look at it and find out what's going on, because now it's not an isolated case.

[scubiecraig]

If it means anything Chris, when I turn my car off (normally, even before the Hella's were installed) the headlights (if left in the "on" position on the stick in the car) will NOT remain on if I turn the car off. It's kind of a nice feature. That way if I forget to turn my headlights off, as soon as I turn the car off, they go off too, so I don't end up with a dead battery.

[Chris]

Right, because the positive wire to the light is connected to ignition. Whereas the hellas are directly to the battery. Not saying this is why, just a theory.

[scubiecraig]

I went out and got some posi-link connectors instead of butt connectors. I've never soldered before, so until I learn to do so, this will be a temporary fit. These are however much much better than your average butt connectors. I also used a posi-tap to tap the green and yellow wires together. Worked great. I'm going to try and clean up my connections tomorrow, if I have the patience. Then, I hope the other hella miraculously will work. If it doesn't I don't know what to do at that point.

[Chris]

Is that one of those electrical connectors that taps into an existing wire to connect up a new wire? Those suck. If you can get them to work at all, and if they don't stop working... they end up letting moisture into the wires corroding them out.

But what are you going to use it for?

[scubiecraig]

I think you are thinking of a scotch-lock. Yes, those do suck. This is what I'm talking about: http://www.posi-lock.com/posiplug.html

Oh, and I used it to tap the yellow and green wires together.

Edited by scubiecraig, 25 February 2012 - 04:42 PM.