Nate's OBS: Out Front

do you know somebody good with wiring? I know you want to learn all this stuff yourself, but it sounds you may want to have help. and how is it you've been on every time i have today?

 
Well all I'm doing today is trying to get the lights hooked up, which pretty much entails waiting for someone to give me ideas or sitting on my butt in the garage.

The problem is the switch, and since the LED turns off whenever the relay works, I have a feeling that's it. I also can't mount the driving lights on top of the bar because they are so deep. The backs of the mounts need to be about 2.5 inches away from the license plate mount, and the steel angle the bar is made out of is only 2.5."

Here're some pictures to explain better. Here's how little room I have:



The mount is Hella-big:



This is how far away I'd have to mount the light to put it at this height:



Or I could move it up higher, but still mount it on the bar. This would probably add quite a bit of wobble, because it has to be raised up quite a bit:



 
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If you have this much spare time during the week, you should pick up some more hours at work so you could have bought a pre made harness for this crap for a measly 25ish bucks. Just my .02. Maybe 987687 can help if he sees this. He is very good at this stuff

 
as far as mounting, it wouldn't take much to have someone weld tabs sticking out further from the bumper

 
For now just ignore the LED pin of the switch. Just use the other terminals for switching the relays. Most of these LED switches work such that you have ground to a terminal, the other side of the circuit you're powering to another terminal, and constant 12v to the third terminal to turn on the LED when you flip the switch. I think what you're doing is connecting the power through the LED or something. And if you're negatively switching it, the LED bit won't work. Just read your schematic that came with the switch.

 
Radioshack doesn't provide schematics with the switch
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. Not even anything about 3 pins.

Anyway, I got it working without the LED. I'm going to bring it to the meet like this unless I figure it out before then, but I don't want to spend more time on it.

Chris, will you be at the meet? I can demonstrate what happens when bridging the pins in different ways, see if you can make more sense out of what is happening than I can.

Bratman, my work is only open two days during the summer, and they only needed me for one day
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. I tried getting another job but started too late (damn AP tests got in my way).

 
Yeah I know it can be hard to get a job sometimes, but keep up the search!!!! Then you will be able to do more with your car!!

 
Well I'm leaving Maine in under a week for a month, and I have to wait and see how much time I have with next year's classes (three AP classes again, what a stupid idea
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). I'd love to work in a coffee joint, even though I don't have any apple products. I almost got a job this summer working (it would have been mostly cleaning I think) in a garage, which would have helped me learn a lot of basics, but the owner didn't remember that I said I needed it for June+July, and he didn't have time for me to come up until August
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.

 
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I hate to be a prick, but, if you have all this free time do some reading and some playing to figure out how this stuff works.

You're close because you have it working, you have power going through the correct 2 terminals. If you're positively switching it, it should work something like my attached picture. Positive usually goes to the center of the 3 pins, the switched circuit to the lights or whatever to an outside pin, and the other outside pin is merely to give a ground to run the LED. I hope it makes sense... it's pretty simple.

relay.jpg


If you're negatively switching for some reason that's weird, but your LED isn't going to work as they only work with the correct polarity. You'll have to find a reversed switch.

You don't need a job, per se, to make money. Just do freelance work like me. You make more money and it's more fun having 5 different skills you might get a phone call about any minute. And running off to something.

 
Anybody need a logo designed?
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And yeah, I'll try just switching the wires around more (alligator clips ftw) and see if I can get the LED working too.

 
I can actually do graphic design, believe it or not... But it's more fun to make pictures like that
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And I can't be at the meet becasue I need to pick someone up from the airport. Which is really stupid because Brunswick isn't very far from me. But that's how life goes, right?

 
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Yeah I love making stuff in photoshop, whether its using existing photos or just from scratch. My dumbass teacher had me teaching Design 1 for a semester...

 
Update update update. Here's the morning's experimenting in a nutshell:

Pin 1 is 12V in, that's for sure.

Pin 2 is to accessory. In this case, my relay. Accessory needs a ground (duh).

pin 3 is the LED ground. It is not switched with 1 for some reason.

Power to 1 and ground to 3 gets LED on, always.

Power to 2 and ground to 3 gets LED on, switched.

Power to 1 and ground to 2 blows my fuse
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. Oops.

Power to 1 and relay to 2 turns on my lights.

I think the two bolded insights hold the key, I just can't find it.

edit: figgured it out. Power in 3, ground 2, accessory 1.

Once I drew a picture based on the above behaviors it made total sense :doh:. Should have done that to begin with.

Its dark in my garage. The inside of my car is even darker. Can somebody tell me where I should look to ground the LED?

 
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Update update update. Here's the morning's experimenting in a nutshell:
Pin 1 is 12V in, that's for sure.

Pin 2 is to accessory. In this case, my relay. Accessory needs a ground (duh).

pin 3 is the LED ground. It is not switched with 1 for some reason.

Power to 1 and ground to 3 gets LED on, always.

Power to 2 and ground to 3 gets LED on, switched.

Power to 1 and ground to 2 blows my fuse
default_banana.gif
. Oops.

Power to 1 and relay to 2 turns on my lights.

I think the two bolded insights hold the key, I just can't find it.

edit: figgured it out. Power in 3, ground 2, accessory 1.

Once I drew a picture based on the above behaviors it made total sense :doh:. Should have done that to begin with.

Its dark in my garage. The inside of my car is even darker. Can somebody tell me where I should look to ground the LED?
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As I showed (at least tried) in my diagram it is wicked simple. You were making it overly complicated in your head. Ground it to something metal. A screw that goes into metal on the car or something. It's just an LED, doesn't need the best ground ever. Whatever is close and easy.

 
Yeah, thank you. I knew that LEDs only worked with current going in the right direction, I just figured that since with the power going in where it was, I could get both the LED to light and the relay to trigger, that it was already going in the right direction.

 
Duh, haha. Wish I would have seen this thread sooner. I just rewired my entire bike in about 10 hours the other day ... plus the wiring I've done on my 22t swap and the wiring I'm going to have to do to my redone 22t motor ... I could have helped you
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I still need to post a thread about my bike, though! Hopefully I'll have it at NEFR!

 
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I'm not going, I have to put the bike motor together so I can drive it tomorrow. Also, it would in no way fit in the car ... even if I took the seats out haha

 
nate, i grounded my hella switch to the hood latch lever under the dash. i don't know if yours is the same but mine had 2 10mm nuts going to a piece of steel

 
^ that's a good idea. I went up instead and stuck it under a bolt that seems to be holding something to my dash support.

 
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