How-To: Upgrade Your Headlight Wiring Harness
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ok need some felp form you smart people....just did this tonight with a friend and we are not alble to turn the headlights off with the switch. for example when the car is running i cannot turn the headlights off....the tail lights and parking lights do but not the headlights, even when i turn the car off.......any ideas, is something wired wrong? or is that just how it is because it is getting power from the battery??
THanks Ryan
THanks Ryan
The headlights should go off with the car off, or when the switch is turned all the way to the left. Check the exterior lighting settings, as when it's dark out the car lights up like a firework for 30 or more seconds to let one see when they're approaching/departing the car. If your headlights don't go off, then see below.
My harnessed headlights go off when the car turns off. Could be a bad relay stuck open. If they only shut off when the relay is physically removed, then the relay itself is bad. Replace with another relay, and it should operate properly.
Yes they would stay on when I turned the headlight switch all the way to the left, and all the lights would go out but the headlights would stay on, even when the car was sitting for 5 min not running.....anyways we cut the capacitor out and now everything works corectly the way they did before the upgrade, so either it was a bad capacitor or it was wired wrong??? either way I will get another capacitor and wire that in when I get a chance. I dnt really need one as I never use DRL I just turn them off right when I start the car, but if I ever let someone else use it or something they will not know this and just drive it with the DRL on so I want to put a capacitor on it. When we undid the capacitor we did se that one of the ends was starting to pull out of the capacitor so myabe it is just bad....we did see this when we installed but did think to much of it but i am starting to think that that was the problem, unless we connected it the wrong way to stat with lol. Thanks for the input tho!
Ryan
Ryan
Yes it is very possible it was wired wrong, but I know there wasnt any arrows anywehre on the capacitor, we checked as xtreme mentioned that in the how to, so we made sure to look for arrows but there was none. But I am sure we could have found a way to do it wrong lol
Ryan
Ryan
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Can you take a picture of said capacitor?
The arrows on mine looked more like >>>>> than regular arrows. They also had a + and a - to designate which end went where. + would be the power feed wire, while - would be the ground wire.
It's also possible you had it wired across two different terminals, or something shifted after installation.
Xtreme, is there a picture of your capacitor, and where to install it? My harness uses a different relay than your harness.
It's also possible you had it wired across two different terminals, or something shifted after installation.
Xtreme, is there a picture of your capacitor, and where to install it? My harness uses a different relay than your harness.
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Should be in the main writeup unless the pictures disappeared for some reason. I used a non-polar capacitor so I didn't have to worry about which way I wired it. Unfortunately, that also made it 2x as big.
No I do not have a picture and we threw it away...... but there was no arrows or >>>>>>> any where, nor was there a + or -. I was pretty sure when I got it the description said it was non-polar, which is why i got that one. Either way it was like $3 so not a big waiste lol.
Also it didnt shift during installation as we tested everything before we even zip tied anything, the capacitor was just resting on the bay by the front grill. Either way I got 2 more comming so we will be more carefull as to try and not pull out one of the leads this time, as I am thinking that is what caused it to go bad in the first place.
Ryan
Also it didnt shift during installation as we tested everything before we even zip tied anything, the capacitor was just resting on the bay by the front grill. Either way I got 2 more comming so we will be more carefull as to try and not pull out one of the leads this time, as I am thinking that is what caused it to go bad in the first place.
Ryan
Just a note to people who feel it's necessary to install in-line fuse holders in this harness. From what I can see it's a needless expense and addition of connectors to a very nice harness. I got my harness yesterday and took it out to look it over today( it actually got here before my car!). It's a well built harness, much better than most relay harnesses I've seen in the past. I got to thinking that even the cheapest harness I've bought in the past included a fuse holder for circuit protection, yet this very nice harness didn't. After closer examination of the harness, I discovered that the 2 black wires that plug to the red wires for power supply are actually labled as fusable links. I was curious as to why they were black yet plugged into the red power wires. Now I know why. I won't be putting online fuse holders on mine as there's no need to fuse a fusable link.
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Nice find! Looks like we don't need fuses after all! This harness was built better than I expected it to be! You saved a lot of people quite a bit of work and a few bucks.
Nice find! Glad to hear my concerns about it not having fuses were unfounded!
Nice work, I may want to try this. Like a HID upgrade thread, anybody have before/after shots to compare? I am obsessed with brighter headlights but didn't want to upgrade to HID's w/out doing a proper retrofit. This looks just as productive and doesn't turn your headlights into a glare kit, lol.
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Well said. I don't have any before and after pics, but I can assure you that it is indeed brighter. I don't know of anyone who's done this modification who didn't notice an increase in brightness and visibility. The sheer number of high beams I got in the face right after this modification was proof of that. I didn't get high beamed before, and must have had the lights adjusted way too high before the harness went in.
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I just placed an order for the recommended harness... will be a nice upgrade whilst remaining stock (+ DRL) & staying on the inexpensive side, too! :eusa_clap:
Now where did I put those nice wire cutters, iron, & stuff? :icon_scratch:
:sigh:
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