It turns out crow tastes a lot like chicken. Just as I was getting comfortable helping you guys out, I go and screw up. It turns out that before I did the November 2010 issue of Jp magazine, I had too much of Patty's moonshine. Never let Randy write when drunk. No wonder the editors took so long to accept my article.
I messed up a couple of wiring diagrams. That column was in response to a reader writing in and asking how to wire up auxiliary lights. Then I go and show you how to keep fuse companies in business. Hopefully you guys figured it out before you blew too many fuses.
Here is the correct way to...
Here is the correct way to do my favorite light wiring. By switching the ground on the relay, all the positive wires are in the engine compartment for an added safety factor; if your switch goes bad, you can just put the wire to ground to light them back up again.
I'm not sure where the whole "eating crow" thing comes from. You would think that if a guy knows a saying he'd know where he got it from, but I don't. If you are going to eat crow, I'd suggest deep frying it.
I also have to say that I have been kind of down on this column for a while. Between the editors switching my pretzels to low salt, I didn't think that many of you were reading the column, but the amount of mail we got from my one mistake really convinced me that you do really read this stuff I write. Thanks. In return, I'll lay off the 'shine when I'm drawing electrical diagrams.
Since it would have been hard for me to explain to Cappa in a letter where I went wrong, I decided to just go ahead and show you guys the right way to wire up lights and add a few other neat tricks at the same time. Sure, I'm using up a whole column to talk about something I just talked about, but I gotta get you guys wiring up lights-not wiring up a fuse-popper.
This is the way most people...
This is the way most people do it and the way many lighting manufacturers' harnesses arrive. There is nothing wrong with this setup, and if you are using an illuminated switch you will need to put a switched positive to the, er, switch anyway.
I like this way of wiring...
I like this way of wiring up the lights that I use both on and off the road. The high beam feed means that when you click off the brights, the added lights turn off, too. Perfect for mountain roads where you see a bunch of oncoming traffic. The other position on the switch is good for wheeling or where there isn't any oncoming traffic to worry about.
Here is the back side of the...
Here is the back side of the switch that I used above. I changed how you would normally wire the switch around and have the power come in at the outer lugs and send it back to the relay from the inner ones. By jumping across to the other side of the switch, I can easily make the indicator lights work the way I want them to.