light mod

[wagonryan]

I wanna put lights under the grille and on the roof of my obs and i know nothing about wiring and stuff. can somebody tell me how to wire lights on top of the car. the other ones i can probably figure out.

help is much appreciated!

[GodSquadMandrake]

Drill holes, screw in lights, run wires under hood. Then keep the lights covered and useless at all times while driving on public roads as it is illegal to have lights above the base of your windshield!

Ok for real this time:

For the wiring usually you get a relay kit with the lights. The Hella Rallye driving lights have crappy wiring and fuses so you might want to go to radioshack and pick up some thicker wire and a mini blade fuse holder if you get that set. Anyway the wire that trips the relay (green) I run to the highbeam wire and the headlight connector (yellow) and use a vampire connector to splice it in. Then one wire from the relay runs to ground (black), one wire runs to your alternator or battery(red), and one wire (yellow) runs to the +12v on both the lights. You wire them in parellel or series it doesn't matter but one will be brighter than the other if you wire them in series. Then you just have to run a ground wire for your lights. When you hit the highbeams the relay will click on and turn on your lights. If you used good wiring, fuses, and have good lights with metal bases you can put in 100 watt H4 bulbs which are a lot brighter then the standard 55w ones. Don't get the gay blue lights, they don't do anything and are a waste of money.
I would run a toggle switch for the lights on your roof because you won't want them to come on with the highbeams all the time, that'll get you tickets. Keep the relay the same, but the switch makes it so that they don't come on with the highbeams unless that switch is flipped.

As for mounting them on the roof my buddy just drilled holes in his roof rack and bolted them to that. I don't really know of a good way of doing it without drilling.

[ZED E85]

I think the first question you need to ask yourself is "how comfortable am I with drilling holes in my car?" At least for the roof lights.

As far as the wiring goes, there's several ways of doing it. If you aren't going too crazy they make little metal tabs to tap off of an existing fuse. If you're going all out you would probably want to run a wire directly to the battery. Use this table (http://www.rbeelectronics.com/wtable.htm) to figure out what size wire you're going to run off of the battery. Just add up all of the light's wattages and figure out how many feet of wire you're going to need and thats the guage you need.

Whichever way you get the power you'll need to run the + line through a switch and then split it off to each light, then just run the - lines to chassis ground. You also need to make sure you get a switch that will handle the amperage you're running. The formula for that is amps=watts/volts. If you're running too much you might want to use a relay instead of just an in-line switch.

[vermont22gt]

I would'nt reccomend putting lights on your roof. If you do, You'll light up your hood like there's no tomorrow. That's a major distraction while driving. You want to see the road while you're driving at night, not your hood.

[rallylife]

I would'nt reccomend putting lights on your roof. If you do, You'll light up your hood like there's no tomorrow. That's a major distraction while driving. You want to see the road while you're driving at night, not your hood.


i agree unless u have them pointing pretty high this might get annoying flashing off of your hood...

[bfrancis827]

I would run a toggle switch for the lights on your roof because you won't want them to come on with the highbeams all the time, that'll get you tickets. Keep the relay the same, but the switch makes it so that they don't come on with the highbeams unless that switch is flipped.

Which wire do you connect the switch to? Just curious.

[Blix666]

hey, not to revive a long dead thread here, but i've done this exact mod to my 2000 OBS. if you've not done it yet, you can view my DIYs or just PM me for more info. the DIY i created for the roof mounting is in my member journal here: http://www.dirtyimpreza.com/forums/showthread.php?t=423&highlight=puff.