Dave Chapman saves the day!

[dwcsr]

The older head light system went from battery to fuse box to the head light switch to the dimmer to the headlights. All total your looking at a minimum of 15 - 18 feet of 18 ga. wire. When you setup a relay kit on them you go from battery to relay to headlight on 14 ga wire. It shortens the trip by about 10 feet and brightens up the lights considerably. No more flicker or dip when something turns on. Pop in some H4's and its very bright.

The relay trigger uses the old headlight wiring and is now a low amp draw from the battery to the fuse box to switch and then to dimmer and then off to the relay coil. No real load there and you can put in a timer for 30 or 60 second off delay.

On mine I have one relay for high and one for low along with the timer relay for 90 second off delay. very nice for parking at night and getting into the shop.

[Rude Dude]

Sometimes a pic is worth a thousand words so here ya go

[skymangs]

I drew a sketch of the pin diagram about 6 years ago when I put in my first relay. I still use that sketch to this day when I wanna install relays!

[dwcsr]

Originally Posted by Rude Dude

Sometimes a pic is worth a thousand words so here ya go

Perfect. If you have only single head lights then eliminate the two high beams in the center, but the rest is the same. The brown and green get fed from the existing wires from dimmer switch.

When you select the wire 14 ga. is more than enough for the head light circuit and 12 ga. to feed the relay from the battery. The dimmer to relay can be 16 ga. or even 18 ga. because there isn't much load on them any more. may be 5 amps at most. Just enough to trigger the relay coil.

The other thing I would do is use a circuit breaker that auto resets and not a fuse. They can be purchase as the familiar two stud type or a newer ATC/ATO that fits a fuse holder. You do this because you have eliminated the breaker load in the headlight switch by using the relay setup so you need something in the new load circuit that will reset if the lights go out when its at night driving due to a short or overload.