Fitted relays for the headlamps, quite a difference in candle power

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neilly

neilly

Well-Known Member
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So,

As I was a little bored and had a few bits and pieces lying around in the garage, as you do.

I decided that having driven the 90 for the first time at night in a while after driving the D2 and being quite shocked at the lack of light power, I suspect single digit candle power :oops::oops:. That it was time to look at improving them.

Checked the earths and voltage , Earth was good, was only getting 9 volts at the headlamp connector. Rather than try and upgrade the old system and replace with new wires etc, I decided to just add relays that take the normal light connector outputs and use these to switch a 2.5mm fused wire feed that is direct from the battery.

Well , it certainly makes difference to the light output.

Cheers
 
Yup, it made a good difference on mine when I did them too with the added bonus that the weak link in the chain, the headlight switch, is now only switching milli amps and so won't melt inside and require replacement.
Mo
 
Kept meaning to do this, with minimal success, being an electrical numpty ... Some of the fires weren't my fault ...

Any chance of a diagram showing roughly what to do? I can work out some of it, but not sure of the direct battery feed and it's connection!
 
Colthebrummie said:
Where did you fit the relays, did you fix them to the inner wing somewhere, somehow.

Col
Click to expand...

Yes, but I need to get a couple of relay brackets to screw them in , at the moment they are cable tied in place. Need to finish the fitting, so will probably be like it in two years time.........................:p:p

Cheers
 
Hi @Paul D

This is what I drew up , ( Had to do it again to clean it up).
Headlamp mod.jpg

As It says, NS is a replication of the OS, So NS is NOT shown. I haven't noted the colour convention from the landy wiring, As I used a MALE H4 wiring connector to connect into the existing wiring connector that normally connects to the rear of the bulb to take the switching wiring from.

This now goes back to the relay. Then I had new H4 connectors bulb connectors fitted to the wires from the relays to fit to the bulb.

All views of the H4 connectors are shown as if looking at the rear of the bulb.

for each side , I ran a 2.5mm (27A) wire from the battery fitted a 15A fuse inline on each run to the relays, after each relay I fitted a 7.5A fuses. again I used 27A wire to the dip or the main beam. Earth wire form the bulb is also 2.5mm and goes back to a known good earth on the bulkhead.

So , in basics I used the existing wiring to switch the relay, made it so that I can always switch it back in a few minutes if needed, ( just requires unplugging the new loom and reconnecting the old wiring H4 connector to the bulb) . I used 2 x 15A fuses / 1 for each side. 4 x 7.5A fuses / 2 for each side. 4 Relays in total.
The extra fuses are overkill, but I decided to be better off overdoing it than not.

Hope that makes sense if not then give me a shout.

EDIT: All views of the headlight H4 connectors are shown looking at the rear of the bulb regardless of being male or female connections!!
ANOTHER EDIT: Any mistakes in the above are purely mine while I was scribbling it down.

Cheers
 
Last edited:
Ahhh, I didn't think to try a separate relay for High and Low beam when I played and lost interest .. which explains a couple of incendiary related things ...

So this looks to me like a small discrete loom for each headlamp, each with two relays that can be unplugged again, enabling someone to use the 'standard' wiring from the headlamp switch right to the point of use whether with the relays connected or not?

Spot on mate, even I should follow that easily .. many thanks ;)
 
A 'cheating' way to get a good feed from the battery is to use the big charge cable on the back of the alternator (if you have the stud style one). That cable can take 100s of amps and is a direct connection to the batt +ve. Saves having to run cables back through the bulkhead, just make sure it is fused close to the alternator and routed away from exhaust.
 
I bought the paddocks loom, does the job just fine, huge improvement. On my to do list is an auxiliary fuse/really box for the headlight and spot light relays just to tidy the engine bay up. Realistically I'll probably never get round to it!
 
Yes that’s the one, you do need to think about your routing of the cables, it was pretty tight in my D1 but the cables are just long enough. I also had one relay fail within a couple of months, doing the job properly with an extra fuse/relay box is what I probably should have done in the first place.
 
I just cleaned up all my connections and put new bulbs in, headlights are much brighter now.
 
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