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vaget22
02-03-2010, 07:11 PM
Ok, I’m going to have a go at explaining how to wire your lights on your 400Ex with relays. First off I need to say you should read all of this and make sure you understand this procedure before you tear into this.
What you will need.
1) Soldering Iron and solder
2) 2 12v automotive relays
3) Weatherproof blade type fuse holder
4) 4ft of 14ga to 16ga red wire (Don’t use solid core)
5) About 3ft of both red and black 16ga to 18ga wire
6) Some 1/4in heat shrink (Harbor freight has it real cheap or Radio Shack)
7) A kit something close to the picture below

http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/zz304/Varget22/412VBN8TYML_SL500_AA280_.jpg?

What you are going to do is use the wires that go to the headlights to activate the relays. The actual power to the headlights will go straight from the battery through the relays to the bulbs. On the bottom of the relays there are four blade type male terminals. Next to each terminal there is a number (85,86,87,and 30). Pay close attention to these numbers. Below is a simple diagram of how each relay is wired.

http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/...pg?t=1264213531

Place the two relays side by side and wrap some tape around them to hold them together just to make it easier to hold on to things. Mark one relay with an L and the other with an H just to keep track of which is which. Doesn’t matter which one just pick them just to be able to keep track. Pull off the front and side plastics so you have access to everything from the battery to the front. Looking at the front you will see a green plug connector you had to disconnect when you removed the nose piece. I wanted to keep this plug so installing and removing the nose piece was like from the factory. What I did was carefully remove it from the tab that holds it to the frame and look at the wires that go into it. There are three wires, white, blue, and green. The white is the low beam, the blue is the high beam, and the green is the ground. I measured about an inch from the green plug and cut all three wires and set the green plug in a safe place till later. Next I stripped the ends of the white and blue wires and soldered female connectors to them. These will plug into the relays. The white one will plug into the relay labeled L at terminal 86. The blue one will plug into the relay labeled H at terminal 86. At this point you should be getting a good idea where you want to mount the relays. Below is a picture where I mounted mine. I worked for me but you can mount yours where you want. You just need to have a place in mind so you know where you will need to run wires to. Don’t let the number of wires in the picture confuse you. There is also a horn, a spal fan, and a Vapor gauge wired into that mess.

http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/...pg?t=1264213644

Now you will need to be able to have wires reach from where the green plug mounts to the frame to where you mounted the relays. You can either find some white and blue pieces of wire or you can use whatever color you want, just keep track of which is which. When I made these splices I soldered them together and put heat shrink on them and reinforced the insulation with electrical tape. From the green plug the white wire needs to go to the relay labeled L at the terminal 87. And the blue wire needs to go to the relay labeled H at the terminal 87. Strip the ends of the wires and use your female connectors. The green wire is the ground and at this point I just spliced a black wire about a foot long or so and hung it off to the side till later. As your doing this try to keep an idea of where all your wires will be routed and the lengths just to keep things from getting out of control and turning into a birds nest by the time you’re done. Now get your fuse holder and the heavier gauge red wire and run some power from your battery up to the relays. Take your fuse holder and use a ring terminal on one end to either connect it to the battery or as I did to the positive end of your starter relay switch. Picture below.

http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/...pg?t=1264213720

At this point it is ok to have the fuse holder connected to the battery ONLY IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A FUSE IN IT. Otherwise just leave it unconnected till you are ready to test the lights. Splice the heavier gauge red wire to the other end of the fuse holder and run it up to the relays. At this point you will need the red wire to go to each relay. I just cut off another piece of the heavier red wire and spliced them together to make a Y to go to each relay. Strip the ends and solder female connectors on them. These will plug into the terminals labeled 30 on both relays. Now the only thing left is to ground things. The spot I used was where the L bracket is mounted to the frame just above the left shock. Remove the bolt and take some sand paper and make sure there is good metal to metal contact. On both relays the terminal labeled 85 goes to ground. I just took a couple of black wires, soldered female connectors on them, plugged them to the terminals 85 and ran them to the bolt mentioned above with a ring terminal. Also bring the other black wire that comes off the green plug talked about earlier to this same ring terminal and ground all three. Put a 15A fuse into the holder, plug in the lights and test. If the fuse blows you have something plugged in wrong. At this point it’s all about weatherproofing things. Use heat shrink on all the plugs on the relays and every splice. Rewrap everything with more electrical tape then wrap it again. When you look at the bottom of the relays there may be some places where water or dirt can find its way into the relays innards. I wrapped the electrical tape around them and worked it into a cone shaped kind of thing to contain a bunch of RTV to seal the bottoms of the relays. Just think weatherproof and seal the crap out of things. Enjoy.