Wiring My High Powered Lights

[Spurshot]

I've been thinking about how I'd like to wire the high powered LED add-on lights I'm planning on installing. The lights I'm planning on installing run from about 2000 lumens each to about 4000 lumens and of various patterns for driving/off-road visibility. I'm not much interested in what the lights do for the looks of the truck. My interest is function.

 

So, I'm thinking about the use of them on long droning drives across the western states. You drive for quite a while in completely unlit areas of highways and 2 lane roads before you encounter oncoming traffic. Then you need to dim your lights.

 

If I equipped my truck with a set of switches for every pair of lights, when I went to dim the lights, I'd be distracted and take more time off of focusing driving than is safe and practicable.

 

My thought was that I'd be using my high beams whenever the high powered lights were on. But not necessarily running high powered lights every time the high beams were on.

 

So, I'm thinking of running a relay triggered by the high beam circuit, that relay circuit would be controlled by a switch that would complete the circuit to all the high powered LED lights.

 

Only when the high beams were on, would the high powered lights be capable of being lit, and then only when the switch was in the on position.

 

This would allow simply dimming the high beam lever to shut down the high beams and the high powered lights with one movement.

 

I'm trying to think of a reason this may not be desirable. Anyone have any comments/ideas?

[moab11]

that is exactly how I have the HID's on my back rack wired and it works great, just one thing to turn off when there is traffic. The other thing that you could is to get a dtsp switch (3 position) so that you can have the LED's on with highs - off - on all the time to give you maximum flexibility.

[Jon A]

Yes, that's exactly how you want to run them. Most "driving lights" should come with a wiring harness already set up for that. If your current harness is only an on/off switch, it may be easier to just buy a new harness.

 

http://www.kchilites.com/accessories/wiring/relay-wiring-harness-kc-6315.html

 

http://www.kchilites.com/media/kc-downloads/whitewire-diagram.pdf

 

It doesn't have to be KC, that's just an example. Anyway, with that harness, if you connect the white wire from the harness to the truck's white wire at the headlight plug, then youre lights should come on and off with the brights with the switch on.

[mdmischief]

I use this switch: http://www.autoswitch.com/as7.php

I have it wired so that the highbeams trigger the switch to "arm" it. You engage the highbeams until the LED lights up. This then controls a relay. For the relay I again use the highbeams to turn the lights on and off.

So when the Autoswitch is armed, the highbeams then control the extra lights. But if I lend the truck to someone else the Autoswitch defaults to off and only the highbeams will come on because they don't know how to arm the Autoswitch to engage the relay and the LEDs.