New to the forum, some questions about what I want to do
I just joined so I could search around to find what I wanted to know, however searching on my phone gives me a lot of irrelevant results and my desktop computers antivirus goes crazy with your site and I basically cant go on it. Keeps telling me your site is dangerous. Also i hit a cyote last night which i should have seen and that makes me mad...
So, I would like to explain what I would like to do, ask a few questions and then if you guys don't mind please direct me to threads that already answer my questions since i'm sure this is nothing new.
So, I have a 1993 Ford Festiva (aka mazda 121, kia pride) I have had one 10 years and just dealt with the poor 9004 lights. I got a new festiva, have a new commute and am sick of the bad lights. In the past I tried 9007 bulbs (stupid) and cheap ebay HID bulbs (also stupid) and I want something that will actually work.
What i need and want to to is get my low beams better. I drive 2hrs a day at night for 6 months of the year but now its a busy highway and i rarely use my high beams. Im happy enough with my high beams for the 3 miles a day or less i use them.
My initial plan was to install relays to high and low beams to improve both and use GE Nighthawk bulbs.
However after thinking about it i realized my daytime running lights will no longer work with this relay setup. However they work on the high beams at 7.5 volts.
So i want to improve just my low beams to keep the drl's i think.
The low beams suck even when there is nobody oncoming close by, no rain and no moon. If theres anybody coming at me or rain i cant see and when litereally any vehicle is behind me their low beams are brighter than mine, put my car in a shadow and i can see better from their lights than mine.
So i'm thinking of Ge nighthawk bulbs, new grounds to both lights, new low beam wiring off a relay, leave the high beam/drl wiring stock and then some sort of bright fog light or driving light that will be used with low beams only that will help me see better/farther but not bother other drivers at all. They dont need to function as actual fog lights, I only want to see better with my low beams.
So I measured headlight voltage with the car idling. Took wires out of the drivers headlight plug and put them into the bulb, then tested voltage with headlights on.
Low beams with headlights on 14.3v at battery, 13.5v at headlight. No difference between using headlight gnd and battery gnd.
High beams 14.25v at battery, 13.03v at light using its ground and 13.07 using battery ground. So no difference really.
But thats a 1.2v drop for the high beams and a 0.8v drop for the low beams. Thats a lot of lumens lost
I know the wiring going to the passenger side is longer and has much more voltage drop but It was way too much of a pain trying to measure the voltage by myself for me to want to do the passenger side too.
Having more trouble than I would have imagined finding the nighthawk bulbs, hopefully some more phone calls will find me some.
This is the front of the car:
This is the wiring diagram if that makes a difference:
So my questions:
1. The pins/contacts in the 9004 bulb sockets-can I buy new ones to crimp my larger wires to? If not I cut some headlight plugs (for 9004) off another car, If I splice my larger ground and low beam wires onto it close to the plug will I still get voltage drop from the short section of small wire?
2. Is there any way possible to do the relays and larger wires on my high beams and still keep the headlights as daytime running lights?
3. The auxiliary lights. I have some pilot brand fog lights that I had on my car years ago. I thought they were amazing at the time. They had a really sharp cutoff when looking against a wall with them (I know thats not a good way to tell) but there wasnt enough room on the car for the mounting hardware and the one would always turn up and blind other drivers so I took them off. Now I am more capable of making them fit and will have to anyway since I lost one mount... Anyhow, I don't remember how far they shone and i havent been able to find them the last 4 days (had em in my car 3 weeks ago) but are they worth trying or is there something else I should buy? I don't want to spend a ton, maybe $100 or less. Not sure if fog lights is what I want or if I should be getting some sort of 'driving lights' and just aim them lower.
4. Where should these auxiliary lights be mounted? This is where I had the old fog lights but should they be higher for what I want now?
I block the entire front of the car like this so blocking airflow is not a concern, I can remove the lights for summer if its an issue. (this was a failed pair of fog lights I tried, they didn't do a thing)
I plan to make my own relay harness for these lights as well unless whatever is recommended already comes with good wiring.
5. wire size to the headlights. Just want to verify that i am on the right track. Relays will be close to the battery, maybe 1 foot. Was planning to use 12awg wire to them from the battery. From the relay to the headlights 14awg to the drivers headlight and 12awg to the passenger. 14awg for grounds no more than 1ft long.
From relay to drivers headlight is no more than 1.5ft, probably 1ft. At 2.5ft total for the drivers side and 6ft total for the passenger side starting at 14.3 volts that should be 14.265v at the drivers side and 14.24v at the passenger side using an online voltage drop calculator. That is acceptable correct?
Thanks for any help
I just joined so I could search around to find what I wanted to know, however searching on my phone gives me a lot of irrelevant results and my desktop computers antivirus goes crazy with your site and I basically cant go on it. Keeps telling me your site is dangerous. Also i hit a cyote last night which i should have seen and that makes me mad...
So, I would like to explain what I would like to do, ask a few questions and then if you guys don't mind please direct me to threads that already answer my questions since i'm sure this is nothing new.
So, I have a 1993 Ford Festiva (aka mazda 121, kia pride) I have had one 10 years and just dealt with the poor 9004 lights. I got a new festiva, have a new commute and am sick of the bad lights. In the past I tried 9007 bulbs (stupid) and cheap ebay HID bulbs (also stupid) and I want something that will actually work.
What i need and want to to is get my low beams better. I drive 2hrs a day at night for 6 months of the year but now its a busy highway and i rarely use my high beams. Im happy enough with my high beams for the 3 miles a day or less i use them.
My initial plan was to install relays to high and low beams to improve both and use GE Nighthawk bulbs.
However after thinking about it i realized my daytime running lights will no longer work with this relay setup. However they work on the high beams at 7.5 volts.
So i want to improve just my low beams to keep the drl's i think.
The low beams suck even when there is nobody oncoming close by, no rain and no moon. If theres anybody coming at me or rain i cant see and when litereally any vehicle is behind me their low beams are brighter than mine, put my car in a shadow and i can see better from their lights than mine.
So i'm thinking of Ge nighthawk bulbs, new grounds to both lights, new low beam wiring off a relay, leave the high beam/drl wiring stock and then some sort of bright fog light or driving light that will be used with low beams only that will help me see better/farther but not bother other drivers at all. They dont need to function as actual fog lights, I only want to see better with my low beams.
So I measured headlight voltage with the car idling. Took wires out of the drivers headlight plug and put them into the bulb, then tested voltage with headlights on.
Low beams with headlights on 14.3v at battery, 13.5v at headlight. No difference between using headlight gnd and battery gnd.
High beams 14.25v at battery, 13.03v at light using its ground and 13.07 using battery ground. So no difference really.
But thats a 1.2v drop for the high beams and a 0.8v drop for the low beams. Thats a lot of lumens lost
I know the wiring going to the passenger side is longer and has much more voltage drop but It was way too much of a pain trying to measure the voltage by myself for me to want to do the passenger side too.
Having more trouble than I would have imagined finding the nighthawk bulbs, hopefully some more phone calls will find me some.
This is the front of the car:
This is the wiring diagram if that makes a difference:
So my questions:
1. The pins/contacts in the 9004 bulb sockets-can I buy new ones to crimp my larger wires to? If not I cut some headlight plugs (for 9004) off another car, If I splice my larger ground and low beam wires onto it close to the plug will I still get voltage drop from the short section of small wire?
2. Is there any way possible to do the relays and larger wires on my high beams and still keep the headlights as daytime running lights?
3. The auxiliary lights. I have some pilot brand fog lights that I had on my car years ago. I thought they were amazing at the time. They had a really sharp cutoff when looking against a wall with them (I know thats not a good way to tell) but there wasnt enough room on the car for the mounting hardware and the one would always turn up and blind other drivers so I took them off. Now I am more capable of making them fit and will have to anyway since I lost one mount... Anyhow, I don't remember how far they shone and i havent been able to find them the last 4 days (had em in my car 3 weeks ago) but are they worth trying or is there something else I should buy? I don't want to spend a ton, maybe $100 or less. Not sure if fog lights is what I want or if I should be getting some sort of 'driving lights' and just aim them lower.
4. Where should these auxiliary lights be mounted? This is where I had the old fog lights but should they be higher for what I want now?
I block the entire front of the car like this so blocking airflow is not a concern, I can remove the lights for summer if its an issue. (this was a failed pair of fog lights I tried, they didn't do a thing)
I plan to make my own relay harness for these lights as well unless whatever is recommended already comes with good wiring.
5. wire size to the headlights. Just want to verify that i am on the right track. Relays will be close to the battery, maybe 1 foot. Was planning to use 12awg wire to them from the battery. From the relay to the headlights 14awg to the drivers headlight and 12awg to the passenger. 14awg for grounds no more than 1ft long.
From relay to drivers headlight is no more than 1.5ft, probably 1ft. At 2.5ft total for the drivers side and 6ft total for the passenger side starting at 14.3 volts that should be 14.265v at the drivers side and 14.24v at the passenger side using an online voltage drop calculator. That is acceptable correct?
Thanks for any help