Van Cafe headlight upgrade kit and relay?

[randywebb]

does the white arrow show the terminals that are always hot and are the ones you use to connect the red wire on the headlight relays to?

note that a PO has installed a red wire (with blue Faston terminal) to one of the male terminals
_________________
1986 2.1L Westy 2wd Auto Trans.

[crazyvwvanman]

Yes, those are the "P" terminals, tied together inside and always hot since one of the large ones comes straight from the battery as the source of all power to the fuse/relay panel.

Mark

[K58]

[crazyvwvanman]

Maybe some people, but I already know. Also it is as plain as can be in the official wiring diagrams.

Bentley page 97.68 shows the layout of the 7 "P" connections.
Page 97.70 shows all 7 "P" connections tied together to circuit 30 across the top of the page. same page shows a large red wire from the battery + to one of the "P" connections.

Mark

[randywebb]

[vers13]

How important is it to give each of the two new relays a dedicated ground on the ground block that is behind the fuse panel? I ask because when I looked there, I saw only one empty male terminal to use, so I took the two grounds from each relay and both are now sharing that single ground terminal. Also, it was reccommended to spilt up the four ground wires that come from the headlights and give each one its own grounding point, yet as mentioned earlier, I couldn't do that. Any solutions?

[Steve Arndt]

I'm sure this has been considered, but I'll mention it anyway. After performing this upgrade, we are now running with unfused leads all the way from the battery, to "P" at the fuse block, to the new relays, then to the headlights. That is a lot of unfused wiring. I'm thinking of pulling mine back apart and splicing in some inline blade fuses between "P" and the relays pin 30.

Steve

[Ahwahnee]

So you're saying that the set-up does not make use of the exisiting headlamp fuses (unlike the other popular kit which does)?

I agree you should want fuses in there somewhere but more than one and separation of L & R so one blown fuse (on a twisty mountain road, at speed, at night) doesn't leave you in the dark.

[Steve Arndt]

Correct.
The existing fuses in the stock locations fuse the wiring to the relay coils only, after this modification.

[crazyvwvanman]

That is not how the relay kits work when installed correctly. The 4 stock headlight fuses remain and still perform their original functions. The 2 relays feed 2 fuses each from the high current outputs pins of the relays.

Mark

[Steve Arndt]

You are correct, my mistake.

I was thinking that the wiring lead directly from the relay 87 to the headlights. I forgot that it went down from 87, to the fuses, then to the lights. Duh.

So only the short sections of the wire to pin 30 from the fuse block is unfused.

[ragnarhairybreeks]

I've posted a couple of diagrams for headlight relays on my blog here:

http://shufti.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/vanagon-headlight-relay-upgrade/

I welcome any comments/corrections.

alistair
_________________
'86 7 passenger syncro, converted to westy pop top, project still in progress
'82 westy, diesel converted to gas in '94, now gone...
https://shufti.blog/
Old address still works...
http://shufti.wordpress.com