jlangholzj
Mustang Master
that 250 must have some serious headlights!! I've only used 10awg for the starter on our R6 engine before, 8awg for my amp in the car. Thats gettin up there in size man!jlangholzj,
Yeah, I mis-spoke, the #10 was on my 69 F250. On the Mustang, I ran 2 separate #12 from battery/solenoid (both on the same ring terminal) with a separate fuse for each wire, just below the solenoid and ran them over to put the relays just above the voltage regulator on the driver side. I then used the driver side headlamp wires to trigger the relays and ran new #14 to each headlight, clipped the plug off the passenger side, folded & taped each cut-off wire & shrink tubed it to insulate. I couldn't see the wisdom of untaping the 40+ year old, brittle, but functioning portion of the harness that goes across, under the radiator just to pull the now unused wires out. At the driver side, I put a new ground terminal from the headlight socket and from the ground wire of the main harness to a clean ground point on the radiator support. On the passenger side, I put on a negative/ground battery cable that has an extra wire on it to a clean ground point on the radiator support along with the ground wire from the passenger side headlight socket. You can never have "TOO GOOD" of a ground!
HTH,
Gene
Yes I used existing wire also. I don't remeber having to cut wire though I think the harnes plugged into existing sockets. I'll have to clean grounds and suckets as suggested. This will be a spring project or I can keep driving around with my brights on - no one seems to notice.
this is basically the conversation that gene and I have been having. If anyone is to do this, don't re-use your stock wiring except for triggering a relay or something else. The stock wires are much smaller, somewhere along 16-18awg and this can be a problem....lol
here's an explination to everyone on how wires work from a EE for those who are a little fuzzy:
think of it like water in a pipe: you have this big source like a lake and you want to draw water into your house. If the pipe is the right size, you get enough water for your daily use. However if the pipe is too small, a couple things can happen:
1) you'll starve the house of water because there just simply isn't enough pipe to supply it and you'll be pissed cause you'll run out halfway through a shower. Now your half wet and still stinky...no good.
OR
2) you can get the amount of water you need BUT the water needs to be pumped faster. Think of the water flow like current, so now you're running more current through a wire than its designed for. Next thing you know the wires melt, arc across the frame (because your forgot to put a fuse in ya big dummy!) and that leaky fuel filter you've been meaning to replace catches fire and your beloved baby is in flames now...RIP
sorry for the bad humor but i'm sure you get the point, morale is, please use proper wire sizing when doing this, if you don't you'll end up with sub par performance or something is on fire...........
wait a minute.... ....kinda sounds like that one strip joint i know of................