Spot light wiring question

hi all, I managed to get some landy safari 5000 spot lights at the weekend and went to have a look at the old wiring that one of the owners had put in. It seems to be a mis match of land wiring as it has the right plugs and wire colouring for the lights. But no switch, so they would have come on with the high beam. I striped out all the wiring as it was badly placed, the relay might have well been fixed to the outside of the landy as you could see it when the bonnet was closed. I managed to find a landy fitting guide http://topix.landrover.jlrext.com/topix/content/document/view?id=556620&groupId=1662 and followed that so I have a few questions. I take it that the blue/yellow wire from the lights to the switch then goes to the relay?. And I take it that the black wires from the light goes straight to the battery. I don't have the switch yet but I want to make sure I have it wired up properly before the switch arrives. Is my diagram right?

It all depends how you want to wire them up, as in how you want them to work.

Essentially all you need to do is connect the spot lights to the + of the battery and the - of the battery. With a negative ground vehicle, negative just needs to be a metal part that eventually leads to the battery.

Obviously you need to be able to turn them on and off. So to do this you use a relay. A relay is really just a remote switch, that you send a signal too to tell it to turn on the lamps.

The reason for this is the amount of current the lamps draw is high, and a normal manual switch is unlikely to like the amp draw and will burn out. For the same reason, you need to ensure you use a suitable gauge wire for the lamps.

To turn the relay on, the easiest way is to use the main beam feed. So that when you put main beam on, it also activates the lamps. As a pre-caution you may want to fit an extra switch here, so that you can disable the spots if you don't want to use them.

Not sure the diagram makes sense tbh. I might be misreading it.

The feed to the relay can come from anywhere from light switch to main beam, wherever is live when main beam is on.

If you want a manual switch it needs to be in line from wherever you take that feed and the relay NOT between the relay and the spots.

Basically the relay is wired feed from main beam to relay and from relay to earth (on a bosch 5 pin terminals 85 and 86), when live this circuit energises the coil and closes the contact between battery +ve (terminal 30) and spotlights (87).

This might help https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/basic-relay-info.48117/

As said .. spots cannot be used on road unless they are triggered by the high beam switch. Offroad they can be used as needed. Mine are set that they don't come on normally, even on high beam, unless I have a switch turned on, then they come on with either flasher OR constant high beam. ie to use my spots I need ignition on, lights and high beam on and a switch on ...

Been thinking of making them also come on independantly on another switch for camping etc so I don't need any other lights or ignition on.

Thanks for the replies. I think I have found an example of the stc53208 wiring diagram. So am I ok to follow this one.

That's the basic idea. With this diagram, the switch to turn the extra lights off completely is on the ground side of the relay, rather than the supply side as is more usual. But it's a perfectly valid way of wiring them and won't affect how it works. With the switch on, the extra lights will come on with the main beam headlamps only. When the switch is off, they won't come on at all. You can have as many extra main-beam lights as you want wired like this, positioned anywhere on the vehicle (facing forwards, obviously.) This is 100% legal to use on the public road.

The switch in the linked-to diagram has extra wires for switch illumination which won't necessarily be relevant. If you're using a basic switch, it will correspond to terminals 1 and 4 of the switch in the diagram. Terminals 2 and 5 aren't needed to make the circuit work.

While you don't need a separate earth supply for the spots, it's a good idea to provide one while you are cabling - it will help with current flow (=brightness) if your chassis/engine earths are not perfect.