A place for more technical discussions. Please make sure you post in the correct section on the site, this way it keeps the site tidy AND ensures you get a more relevant answer.
I want to add some rally lights on the front of my gen 3, still need to choose exactly where, but I want to do everything myself and don't know much about electrical stuff, has anybody that has added rally lights to their Jimny got any advice?
You need to be more explicit about the sort of lamps you want and what you hope to achieve from them. For instance you could be looking for a spot beam for long distance, a driving light for a better spread or fog lights. If you are considering mounting them in front of the grill be advised that interfering with air flow to the rad. can cause overheating and mounting them on a roof rail may be illegal.
Yeah i wasn't very precise with my question, I want to add some lights to widen the light come in front of the car AND lengthen it too, maybe 2 for width and 2 for length, and obviously I want to add them for aesthetic reasons.
I was worried about the airflow disruption too, and here I can't mount them on the roof, so I was asking if maybe someone has a better idea.
also, I want to use the stock buttons to switch the lights on and off, since I have two blanked out buttons on the left of the steering wheel, does anybody know how to make them functional?
It's very easy to fall foul of the lighting regs. and there are a couple of points on the red jimny which may just do that. The pod mounted on the bonnet will be within the drivers line of sight and the roof mounted lamps will be more than 54" above the ground. I would suggest that both these points need checking before any decisions are taken.
Oooh that's pretty cool, but I don't know if that'll be legal where I live, I need to check the regulations.
apart from that, how would you guys connect the lamps to the car's electrical system?
Earth wire to a suitable earthing point. Best of all is the neg. post on the battery. Power to lights from a relay connected to the pos. on the battery via a suitable inline fuse. Earth on relay to suitable earth either battery or chassis.
Power to switch relay is your choice and depends on local requirements and the sort of lamps you ultimately buy but can be as simple as a spur from your main beam to a separate switch linked either through the ignition, the lighting circuit or from the battery.
You probably already know this, but for reading terrain and driving fast you definitely want the light coming from below your eye line. Lights on the roof are no good for driving quickly.
The Jimny electrics are earth switched so Roger's advice on how to wire a relay will confuse things. Have a look in the wiki section for how to wire a relay on a Jimny.
A quick check on the web and Lazer lamps say the higher the lamp is mounted, the better. My only concern would be reflection of light off the bonnet. Maybe this is why rally cars quite often paint the bonnet matt black.
Roger
ps I didn't tell Vandoni how to wire the relay. I suggested he fit one as a relay can cope with 30 amps whilst the switches mentioned by Busta are rated at 20 amps.
A light source below your eye line casts visible shadows on uneven ground, highlighting high and low spots and making it easy to read the terrain when travelling at speed. Bright light from above your eye line has the opposite effect and "washes out" uneven ground, making the terrain much harder to read. You can verify this at night with a torch, holding it below and above your head and observing how the presence of shadows makes prominent things much more obvious. On a sandy beach and the effect is very clear. With the light source coming from above your eye line even large holes can be almost invisible.
So while lights on the roof are good for throwing light far and wide, for driving quickly your brightest lights should be low down on the front of the car.
The switch is an example of one that is the correct size to fit directly into the blank slots in the dash, which is what the OP is seeking. As well as having a switch, auxiliary driving lights should be wired so they come on with full beam, which is best done with a relay and therefore requires understanding how the standard lights are wired. Assuming Vandoni will be using LED lights, 20 amps would allow for the equivalent light output of around 40 standard headlight bulbs but if that's not sufficient then a second relay can be used so the load is not all passing through the switch. This doesn't remove the need to have a relay wired into the standard full beam circuit.
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