Urgent: Adding driving lights to 07 Liberty - Highbeam issue

[JNAC]

Hey everyone,

I've done some searching on here with no luck but if I've missed an answer forgive me.

I've spent all day mounting and wiring a set of LED driving lights to the front of my Liberty.

They are running through a relay as they should and as far as I can tell everything is done correctly.

My issue is the high beam circuit I'm trying to run a trigger wire off constantly has 12v running through it. Not enough to turn the high beam on but enough to trigger the relay. When I actually turn the high beams on the relay turns the driving lights off.

I wired it up to the normal headlights to see what would happened and it all worked fine. Does anyone know why the high beam would always have 12v running through it?

I thought before I posted this I would make sure what I was saying was right and it mostly was.... Turns out there is 12v running down both sides of the circuit to the plug that goes on the high beam. When you switch the high on one side keeps it's 12v the other becomes what I would assume is a cold ground.

Any help would be fantastic as I'm doing an 800km night time run Tuesday night and want this fixed by then.

[RX25SE]

Without looking at a wiring diagram, I would say the high beam switches ground, probably via a relay that is powered from ignition. This is common on Japanese cars.

You haven't accidentally used a change over relay have you? A c/o relay has an 87 and an 87a terminal.

Try powering the relay coil (pins 85 and 86) across the high beam globe, basically wiring it in parallel.

I think what is happening is that you are powering the relay from the earth switched side of the high beam. When the h/beam is off 12v flows through the filament of the globe and would normally go nowhere when the switch is off, but you have the relay coil connected to it and to ground. As the relay coil has a higher resistance than the globe, the current flowing energises the relay turning on the d/lamps when the h/beam is off. When the h/beams are turned on, the supply to the relay goes to 0v turning off the d/lamps.

[JNAC]

Without looking at a wiring diagram, I would say the high beam switches ground, probably via a relay that is powered from ignition. This is common on Japanese cars.

You haven't accidentally used a change over relay have you? A c/o relay has an 87 and an 87a terminal.

Try powering the relay coil (pins 85 and 86) across the high beam globe, basically wiring it in parallel.

I think what is happening is that you are powering the relay from the earth switched side of the high beam. When the h/beam is off 12v flows through the filament of the globe and would normally go nowhere when the switch is off, but you have the relay coil connected to it and to ground. As the relay coil has a higher resistance than the globe, the current flowing energises the relay turning on the d/lamps when the h/beam is off. When the h/beams are turned on, the supply to the relay goes to 0v turning off the d/lamps.

I think you may be on to something with this change over thing.

The lights came with a relay and it does have 5 pins. The people at Jaycar told me just to leave the 5th one disconnected as it would work. I'll post a link to a wiring digram that is almost the same as the one I followed. Only difference is this one is going to the low beam wire.

http://www.accessconnect.com/images/driving_lights.jpg

If this is the wrong relay would it be at all possible to link me to the correct one from somewhere like JayCar?

cheers.

[RX25SE]

If your relay has 5 pins, check if it has an 87 and an 87a.
If it does, connect both d/lights to 87.

If it has two 87 terminals, connect one d/lamp to each. (or both to one 87, it wont matter)

I still think you have wired the relay correctly, just powering it wrong.

[BillyCorgi]

A set of driving lamps were wired on my MY03 Liberty many years back.
During the installation I found that the common to both High and Low beams were permanently powered and the vehicles headlight relays would "ground" the bulbs to bring in either low beam or high beam.
I found what you described, the high beam would bring the driving lights off.

This was solved by fitting a control relay across the high-beam bulb.
That way when the high beams were on, the relay would energise and trigger the head lamp relay for the 4 x 100 watt driving lamps.

[JNAC]

If your relay has 5 pins, check if it has an 87 and an 87a.
If it does, connect both d/lights to 87.

If it has two 87 terminals, connect one d/lamp to each. (or both to one 87, it wont matter)

I still think you have wired the relay correctly, just powering it wrong.

It does have an 87 and an 87a. I have wired it as per the picture the only problem is the control wire to trip the relay. I need it to come on with the high beams but as I've said both sides of the high beam circuit trigger it lights on or not. Would wiring it as BillyCorgi said change anything? I'm happy to give that a go if this is the right relay to use to do it that way.

I really don't want to have to turn them on and off with a separate switch on the dash but I've got that to fall back on if I need to.