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Here I was, charging about the place in the middle of the night on our badly lit roads and almost pitch black bush tracks and I could hardly see a thing, even with high beam on standard Kombi lighting leaves a lot to be desired. So what did I do, well what else, go out and buy some auxiliary lighting After installing my bigger alternator and auxiliary battery I now had a whole heap more power to play with in the way of amps and volts so I finally decided to use it. First up I decided that I didn't need gigawatts of power to light my way, just a nice set of 100watt spotlights mounted on the bullbar to enhance the view that I already got with highbeam. It was time to shop I had a few pre-requisites when I went shopping for the spotties, first up they had to be rubber mounted. My Bus does get bounced around a lot and when you mount lights directly to something like a bullbar with no isolating rubber mount they have a tendency to blow globes, and that's a real pain. I wanted them to have a metal case, just for that extra bit of strength. They needed to about 140mm in diameter, not too big but not so small they don't do the job. And I also wanted about 100w from them with a reasonable spread and distance. But for me, being on a severe budget, price was also an issue. After a look around lights like Hella, Cibie and other big names were ruled out because of price and I ended up buying a set from the local Auto shop. They had all the features I wanted but without the huge price tag. I won't get as much kudos with them on the Bus as I would with a row of big name spotties but they do what I want and hopefully nobody will try and steal them. As a bonus they also came with a 30amp relay, a switch and some clear plastic covers to protect the glass lenses. Fitting Time Now it was time to fit them. The bullbar already had two tabs welded to it with holes in that were just the right size to fit the lights. So first up just bolt them on. That was easy and they look pretty cool too!!! Then it was time to decide how to wire them up. There are two ways, the legal way and the easy way. In Australia spotlights are only legal if they only come on when the highbeam on the headlight is on and if they go off when highbeam is turned off. This makes the wiring a little harder but seems to make sense. After all if you've got the spotlights on you'd want your highbeam on as well wouldn't you. The easy way is to just wire them straight up to the battery with a switch to turn them off and on. It works but the switch has to switch a lot of currently and can fail. It also means you may have to turn off your highbeam and your spotlights if traffic comes the other way. Not easy to do when you're driving along. I decided on a combination of the two. I installed a relay so I wasn't putting a lot of current through a switch and wired up my lights to only work when highbeam is turned on, here's how it's done.
This is pretty much the layout. For the spotlights to work the ignition needs to be on, the highbeam needs to be on and the spotlight switch needs to be on. If the spotlight switch isn't on and the highbeam is turned on the highbeam will still work but the spotlights will stay off. This means in normal day to day driving if I flash my highbeam I don't have to flash the spotlights as well. With this setup it also means as soon as I turn the highbeam off the spotlights go off as well even with the spotligh switch in the on position. I soldered all the connects where possible or soldered to push on spade style terminals. Where the wiring ran outside the bus I put it through some plastic tubing, the type you see in car stereo installations, and taped the ends of the tubes to keep the moisture out. It ended up being a very neat and tidy setup and with the judicious use of some cable ties it all stays together and isn't too obvious. How did it go?? Well after a few weeks of driving in most all conditions the spotlights work just fine, they're nice and bright and since they run off the Auxiliary battery there's no drain at all on the main battery. I should've done this a long time ago. Maybe you'll see the light too ;) |
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