I thought I'd post up this here incase anyone had a Ram and wanted to check it out.

Just thought I'd post up that I got this installed and post some pictures of how I installed it. They were for another forum where a guy was having a problem installing his because how he wanted to route it the wires to the passenger headlight were too short so I was showing him how I routed it. Figured I minus well post them here too.

It imo doesn't look factory but doesn't look bad either and I'm super picky as you all know. I originally wanted to run the wires to the passenger side behind the bumper so you couldn't see them but they weren't long enough for that. I thought seriously about extending them but decided not to. IMO the only reason it doesn't look factory is the yellow shielding on them and the zip ties are white and yellow instead of black as I didn't have any black ones left in the thing of zip ties I used. I might have had them somewhere else but didn't look. I feel that this was probably the best way about wiring it. I thought about getting some black wire loom to put over it but didn't want to go to the store so just did without. I had a short piece of blue I put on the ground wire on the passenger side to try to keep it away from what looks like a A/C line. It seemed hot though so I don't want that wire getting hot. It's about 1/8-1/4th a inch away how I have it tied but it may touch so I wanted more than just shielding on it.

Anyway here we go onto the pictures. There are lots of them.




Around what looks like the A/C line. This should be fine right?


Didn't really want to wrap a zip tie around the radiator support here but I didn't want it hitting the hoses either so just put 2 zip ties together to hold it against the radiator support.









Just a few pictures of the truck I took while taking pics.





Anyway what do you guys think of the install? I'm such a perfectionist. I'm not new to wiring infact it's probably one of the things I'm best at when it comes to working on vehicles however this kit didn't really require any wiring as it was all plug and play. It was mostly just running the wiring. I don't really like the yellow shielding on it so am thinking of getting black wire loom but at the same time I don't see it being exactly worth the money. What do you guys think? How do you think it looks? I was originally going to run it behind the bumper but it was too short for that and I decided not to extend the wires and to just run it like this.

Anyway whats you guys opinions?

 

BTW do I need a fuse in here? It doesn't seem to have a fuse so I'm thinking I need one. I was just going to solder an inline fuse holder into each of the power lines. How big of a fuse will I need for them? I'm thinking the lights at high beams are 100 watts each so 200 watts which is right under 17 amps but I'm afraid it might trip a 20 amp fuse on startup so I was going to do a 30 amp fuse. Will that be enough? Is one power wire for each side or one for the low and one for the high beams?

Do I actually need this fuse or is it something I'm being over paranoid about?

 

I thought I'd go ahead and post of my pictures now of how I redid it. I think it looks almost factory now and a ton better. I just wasn't happy with it being yellow.




I redid the passenger side ground moving it away from what looks to be the A/C line. I took a little creative work but I got it moved and then got rid of the blue wire loom stuff and replaced it with the black I had left over. I had just used blue as I had it at the house but ended up getting a pack of black anyway.



I think it looks a ton better. I'm super happy with the looks now where as I wasn't so much before. I just wish I could get the problems worked out.

 

What is this? High-wattage halogen bulbs?

I would do a 30-amp relay for each side (unless the factory headlight have relays already), and put a 20-amp fuse for each side.

 

Yeah they are high wattage bulbs 80/100watt Cuzo 9004 bulbs and I put a 30 amp fuse in for each side and they have relays for high and lows and the factory has relays that I'm not sure if are still in use however this kit is giving me a bunch of problems. I may end up just putting a Nokya harness on for the bulbs and not worry about taking the load off the switch and just not using this harness as I'm having issues.

 

You definitely do NOT want 160+ watts going through your headlight switch. That's a bad idea.

And please tell me you did not replace the factory headlight fuses with 30amp ones. That's an electrical fire waiting to happen. The point of fuses is to protect the electrical system from shorts. By putting in larger fuses, you completely defeat that purpose, and a wire could possibly short out before the fuse blows.

What you need is a harness for each headlight. Each harness should consist of 14-ga. wire with a 20-amp fuse within 12 inches of the battery positive terminal. Then that wire should go to a 30-amp relay (one for each side). The other side goes to the headlight bulb, and then to ground. Then you need wires going from the positive and negative wires of your headlight harness to connect to the other 2 terminals of the relay to switch the relay.

So then you have your headlights powered directly from the battery, with a very low current going through the headlight switch.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by PatrickGSR94 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">You definitely do NOT want 160+ watts going through your headlight switch. That's a bad idea.

And please tell me you did not replace the factory headlight fuses with 30amp ones. That's an electrical fire waiting to happen. The point of fuses is to protect the electrical system from shorts. By putting in larger fuses, you completely defeat that purpose, and a wire could possibly short out before the fuse blows.

What you need is a harness for each headlight. Each harness should consist of 14-ga. wire with a 20-amp fuse within 12 inches of the battery positive terminal. Then that wire should go to a 30-amp relay (one for each side). The other side goes to the headlight bulb, and then to ground. Then you need wires going from the positive and negative wires of your headlight harness to connect to the other 2 terminals of the relay to switch the relay.

So then you have your headlights powered directly from the battery, with a very low current going through the headlight switch.</TD></TR></TABLE>With this headlight harness the headlights are powered directly from the battery and the fuses are on the harness. The wire comes off the battery into a fuse a couple inches down then into relays then to the headlights. However I used 30 amp fuses as I was afraid 20 amp would blow. It's a big enough wire that it shouldn't matter. I didn't change any of the stock fuses in the fuse box I just added 30 amp fuses inline of the wires coming from the battery before the relays. I'm having soo many issues with this kit I think I'm just going to take it off and throw it away and go back to the stock wiring with it running through the switch.

 

hmm well if you do that and your headlight switch melts or burns out, methinks you'll be having bigger problems than what you're having now.

Are you sure you have everything wired up correctly?

Are the relays a quality brand like Bosch? I won't use anything other than Bosch relays.

*edit* 16-ga. wire has a max amp rating of around 20 amps for a short run, and 14-ga. has a 40 amp max rating. So I hope your harness is using at least 14 ga. wire.

 

The harness is 14 gauge wire. It actually seems slightly bigger than 14 gauge but slightly smaller than a 12 gauge I used so I really think it's 14 gauge. It's for sure not any smaller than 14.

You can't really wire this setup up incorrectly. It basically plugs into the batter and into one of the headlight plugs and then into each headlight bulb. The relays are whatever came with it so I doubt Bosch. I'm having a issue where if the foglights are on the high beam light on the dash lights up dim when the lowbeams are on. If you turn the fog lights off this goes away. The other issue is once you turn the high beams on once they stay on even if you go back to low beams then it keeps both the high and low beams on at the same time and it seems like it stays like this until you cut the fog lights off then the high beams go off. You can cut the fog lights right back on and it will be back to normal until you turn the high beams on again. I'm not sure whats going on here and since the fog lights should be seperate not sure how they are working their way into this.

 

Well factory fog lights are supposed to turn off when you turn on high beams. Did you mess w/ the fog light wiring at all?

Have you tried just hooking everything back up like stock to see if the problems go away?

Also, are you certain that harness is fully grounded properly?

 

The harness has a good ground. I checked it with my meter.

I didn't mess with the fog light wiring at all and if it I unplug this harness from the factory headlight plug and then connect the factory plugs back up to the bulbs the problems go away and go back to normal. The high beam light on the dash goes back to being off unless the high beams are on too.