Electrical question, wiring aux. lights

[kobudo28]

I am putting some Hella DE fogs on my Wee, 35W bulbs, and I have a question / concern about hooking them up. Given the kit is intended for a car I have shortened the harness as required.

There is a wire (blue) that is intended to be clipped into the low beam headlight lead wire as you would in a car. I am concerned about cutting into the Wee harness unless I have to or using one of the cheezy 3-M conn. to clip into the wires.

Given that the lights are on all of the time on a bike, where should I connect the blue wire to? Hooking it directly to the battery will kill the battery as the relay will be constantly powered won't it? I need to hook it to a switched power somewhere. Any suggestions?

Thank you for tolerating my ignorance, well, if you are tolerating it.

[Railbender]

Assuming you want to be legal about this you have to go to the low beam wire. Your blue wire should go to the coil of the relay, with a switch in the circuit. That way the fog lights will only function when the switch is on and the low beam is on and go off if you go to high beam. If you want to be able to use them with low & high it can go to any 12V source. The 12V power to the contact portion of the relay should come from the battery, preferably with a fuse close to the battery, and go to the fog lights.

[kobudo28]

Originally Posted by Railbender

Assuming you want to be legal about this you have to go to the low beam wire. Your blue wire should go to the coil of the relay, with a switch in the circuit. That way the fog lights will only function when the switch is on and the low beam is on and go off if you go to high beam. If you want to be able to use them with low & high it can go to any 12V source. The 12V power to the contact portion of the relay should come from the battery, preferably with a fuse close to the battery, and go to the fog lights.

Thanks for your input. The Hella kit is all plug and play, lights, switch, etc., except the blue wire, which they tell you to clip into the low beam wire. It looks like I do not have much choice but to do so. The 3M / Scotch connectors are not my first choice. I'll have to do what I can to weatherproof the connector.

There are already ring terminals to hook to the battery +/-, relay built in with a fuse on the positive side very close to the battery, etc.

[vuugti]

I would use some size appropriate bullet style connectors. Honda does this with great success. Very convienent. Two wires go into one - only one out one the opposite side (say low beam headlight wire). GB makes these - PushGard™ Push-in Wire Connectors, pretty cool and a positive connection.

Andy

[kobudo28]

Originally Posted by vuugti

I would use some size appropriate bullet style connectors. Honda does this with great success. Very convienent. Two wires go into one - only one out one the opposite side (say low beam headlight wire). GB makes these - PushGard™ Push-in Wire Connectors, pretty cool and a positive connection.

Andy

Thanks Andy, I'll look into that style of connector.

[JDLuke]

My bike isn't the same as yours, but much of the concept should still hold.

When I added aux. lights to my F650GS, what I did was open up the switch housing and pick up the hot lead for the headlamp inside there. Since I mounted the aux. light switch in the near vicinity, it made a lot of sense to do it this way.

[Scottysix9]

How you wire lights depends on how you are going to use them. Do you want them always on, on with the low beam, on with the high beam, switchable? Every option has a different solution.