Auxiliary driving lights are starting to piss me off

It started 2 months after I fitted Hella 450s on my 3rd gen 4runner. First I had one light go out, then when I tried fixing it I started having fuses pop. I tracked down the issue to a loose butt connector, and I wasn't pleased with my initial installation anyway.

So a few days ago I went in and completely redid the wiring from the relay to the fog lights. I used new wiring, I made a custom wiring harness that used soldered connections insulated with liquid electrical tape with electrical tape over that for good measure. I did everything right (except for accidently reversing the color of my negative and positive wires).

I just had the familiar experience of a half second of light followed by a popping fuse. Out of pure frustration I put a new fuse in and kept increasing the rating until 25 amps before I ran out of higher value fuses (15 is standard fuse).

What the fuck is causing this?

The only thing I can think of is the positive end of the H3 bulb is somehow contacting the negative prong of the bulb and creating an easy path to short circuit.

My wiring is this:

Arrow 1. The relay shares a ground point with the neutral of the fog lights. Also not shown is that there is a wire leading off the negative terminal of the battery that also attaches to this ground point. Its one of those things that was like that when I got it and I haven't touched it since it didn't cause me any issues having it like that.

Arrow 2. Points to where my switch is powered. It is fuse tapped into the interior fuse box, this part of my wiring in the interior works fine and does what it shows. I'm labeling it to avoid any confusion.

Link: https://imgur.com/a/ml4jxta

 

I would start here...





To fix it, I would just get something like this... and be done with it!

$13 Nilight 10011W 16AWG Wiring Harness Kit-2 Leads LED Light Bar 12V On/Off 5 Pin Rocker Switch Power Relay Blade Fuse for Jeep Boat Trucks, 2 Years Warranty

https://www.amazon.com/Nilight-NI-W...x=light+bar+wire+ha,aps,227&sr=8-2-spons&th=1

 

Do you have the wiring diagram of the relay that you can share? The power switch in the cabin should be used to energize the relay and the contacts in the relay (normally open) should be used to send voltage to the lights.

 

I have no wiring diagram of the relay, I had to make that wiring diagram. The relay us pretty typical, its usually open until it gets energized by the switch in the cabin (which is wired into the cabin fuse box). The trigger wire is low power, the kit said to use a 2 amp fuse.

 

Without knowing exactly how you wired the relay, it will be hard for anyone to help, sorry. Is there a drawing on the side of the relay showing the terminal connections that you can take a picture of?

 

The relay had no diagram, but it didn't end up being my issue. My guess in my original post was correct. The H3 uses a wire lead for the positive connection. So I when I put the light back into its small plastic housing I forgot to put the rubber shield back over the metal spade connector, so in the cramped space of the light housing the positive lead was bound to move around and short out on the negative terminal. Also explains why my fuses popped after I put the lights back in initially, and why it worked when I would test it dangling outside of its housing.

 

Glad you got it figured out!