Another wiring question

[CruisinCruzan]

I have a set of Hella micro de xenon lights on my RT. They come with a relay that has a lead that went straight to the battery. In addition each lamp has a power lead with an in-line fuse that attached to the relay. My question is this; the lead that is supposed to go straight to the battery I connected to a switched power lead on my fuse block. I would like to clean up the wiring of the 7 circuits I've added and I wanted to know if I removed the in-line fuses would the wire connected to my fuse block provide adequate protection. Thanks

[beagle]

If i understand you correct, you have a fuse in the fuse block, and off of it you have tapped in and connected a wire to the lights with an inline fuse. If this is the case you can eliminate the in line fuse if it is of equal amperager to the fuse in the fuse block. If it is a lower amp fuse you are replacing the fuse with a wick, which will at a very bad time choose to light. Make sure that the tap a the fuse block is on the output side of the fuse. You'd be suprised how many cooked electrical systems I've had to fix because someone made a toaster over. when in doubt, by a test light.

[CruisinCruzan]

I was afraid I would screw up the question. What I have is a wire that goes from my relay to a switched power lead on my fuse block. I then have 2 separate power leads, one from each lamp that have in line fuses that attach to different terminals on the relay. In the instructions that came with the light kit the lead that I connected to switched power on my fuse block was to go straight to the battery. Since I connected it to a fused power lead could I remove the 2 in line fuses that go from the lamps to the relay and still have adequate protection.

[beagle]

as long as you are comparing amps to amps = same amp for the in line and block, then the answer is yes. make sure you tie into the output side of the fuse, or you will have no protection. one last thing, make damn sure your ground is good. bad grounds make big problems. when in doubt, run a ground buss from the battery to a more accessible location.

[ScottB]

If I understand correctly how the wiring is configured the answer is no. Fuses protect the wire from overload, they don't protect the equipment in this case the lights. The best application here is this, the fuse in your fuse block is sized to the wire size and load of two lights. The wire between the relay and each light is most likely smaller therefore requiring a smaller fuse sized to the wire and one light. This gives the best although possibly redundant protection. I will give an example, each lamp is 55 watts divided by 12 volts is 4.58 amps. The wire is most likely 18 guage maybe 16 guage, use a 10 amp fuse for each light. The wire between the fuseblock and relay carries twice the amperage and should be 14 guage wire, use a 15 amp fuse. In most automotive electrical systems the second set of fuses would not be there but more protection is always better, unless it is redundant.

 

Scott