Instructions for LED Headlight upgrade (1 Viewer)

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Been driving around for a few days with this setup and no issues. The relay is only on my driver side harness. Passenger side will soon be switched to a simpler harness without a relay: high beam plug flipped, low beam plug with common positive to headlamp positive and headlamp negative to ground (horn bolt). Relay should only be needed on one side to push 12v back to the high beam indicator.
@amw2320, would you mind posting a photo of the setup on your drivers side? My lights just came in and have the relay/resistor and pigtails in transit. I’ve read the thread a couple of times and I’m sure it all makes sense when the wires are all in front of me but my brain needs a visual to see how the high beam selector setup looks in real life.
Thx!
 
Been driving around for a few days with this setup and no issues. The relay is only on my driver side harness. Passenger side will soon be switched to a simpler harness without a relay: high beam plug flipped, low beam plug with common positive to headlamp positive and headlamp negative to ground (horn bolt). Relay should only be needed on one side to push 12v back to the high beam indicator.
Good to hear. This much simplifies the conversion.
 
@amw2320, would you mind posting a photo of the setup on your drivers side? My lights just came in and have the relay/resistor and pigtails in transit. I’ve read the thread a couple of times and I’m sure it all makes sense when the wires are all in front of me but my brain needs a visual to see how the high beam selector setup looks in real life.
Thx!

I probably can't get everything taken out until this weekend. Really busy at work. But here is a quick diagram. That box in between the two positive terminals and relay pins 30 and 85 is my rendition of a butt connector.

Remember you should only need this relay setup on one side. The opposite side can be made without a relay. Just connect the male H4 positive to the female H4 positive, and ground the female H4 negative. (Should work, my other weekend project).

As mentioned previously, I have been grounding to the horn bolt. This is only for the low beams. High beams are much easier. Just unplug and flip them over to reverse polarity. This leaves you with the middle prong plugged into nothing, but it doesn't matter.

EDIT:
ARGH... I wrote pos, H, neg for the male H4 pigtail. It should be pos, H, and L for common positive, high beam ground, and low beam ground respectively.

IMG_20200317_185041.jpg
 
I probably can't get everything taken out until this weekend. Really busy at work. But here is a quick diagram. That box in between the two positive terminals and relay pins 30 and 85 is my rendition of a butt connector.

Remember you should only need this relay setup on one side. The opposite side can be made without a relay. Just connect the male H4 positive to the female H4 positive, and ground the female H4 negative. (Should work, my other weekend project).

As mentioned previously, I have been grounding to the horn bolt. This is only for the low beams. High beams are much easier. Just unplug and flip them over to reverse polarity. This leaves you with the middle prong plugged into nothing, but it doesn't matter.

EDIT:
ARGH... I wrote pos, H, neg for the male H4 pigtail. It should be pos, H, and L for common positive, high beam ground, and low beam ground respectively.

View attachment 2241905
Thank you. If you do happen to have time this weekend I’d be truly grateful for the photo (even better if you had time to snap passenger side, driver side and high beam indicator setup)
I know that once I’m into the job it’ll all make sense but as I sit with all of the boxes of parts and my rig in the garage my brain just can’t seem to visualize the whole enchilada

plus if I do do screw it up, my wife who just saw the $900 credit card charges for this equipment will absolutely torture me if I don’t get it to work correctly 👮
 
This is a reverse polarity issue. There are adaptors for sale on ebay for about $14. I purchased a pair for my Vision X LED headlights. Worth the money

I installed these on PCC's lights and they work well. Simple plug and play.


s-l640.jpg
 
This is a reverse polarity issue. There are adaptors for sale on ebay for about $14. I purchased a pair for my Vision X LED headlights. Worth the money

I installed these on PCC's lights and they work well. Simple plug and play.

At the end of the day, this similar to what we are building.

There are 3 things that need to happen to make a US wired FJ62 work
1) Positive and negative need to be swapped. (Reverse polarity)
2) In our FJ62, (and other old Toyotas) the low beam connector has 1 positive and 2 negative (switched ground). LED headlamps are setup for 2 positive and 1 negative (switched power).
3) High beam indicator needs power to light up.

For the high beam plug, the only thing you need is (1). That is why we can just flip the connector 180 degrees and it works fine.

For low beam plug you need (1) for the low beams to turn on, and (2) signal the high beams to turn on and off. This is what the box you show above appears to do.

For your high beam indicator to work (3), you need to feed power into one of the pins ground pins (the low beam ground) for it to light up the indicator. This works for the the original wiring by sending remaining current after passing through the low beam headlamp (which has dropped to around 10v) through the high beam indicator bulb before it hits ground.

Without knowing what is going on inside this box, I can't really say whats happening. It looks like the first version I built where there was no resistor and I tried to send current from the bulb to the high beam indicator. This did not work for me. I'm also a bit confused as the image you show has a pin which needs to be grounded, but it is in the opposite spot that I am using. If it works for you, awesome! Does your high beam indicator work? And do all 4 lights turn on when you turn on high beams?

Also do you have eurospec wiring? Looking at wiring diagrams, european versions appear to be switched power instead of switched ground (2), so I think all you need to do is reverse the polarity.
 
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Thanks @amw2320 ! Does this work with jwSpeakers? No need to do anything with polarity?

Would you mind posting links to the relay and diod used?
 
Thanks @amw2320 ! Does this work with jwSpeakers? No need to do anything with polarity?

Would you mind posting links to the relay and diod used?

Yes, I have JW speakers installed. This wiring switches the polarity (sends positive to the negative pin and negative to the positive pin).

I don't think you need anything special in terms of relay. I got a generic waterproof one off of amazon. Same with the 10ohm 50w resistor.

Specifically I bought:
relays
and
resisitor
 
Yes, I have JW speakers installed. This wiring switches the polarity (sends positive to the negative pin and negative to the positive pin).

I don't think you need anything special in terms of relay. I got a generic waterproof one off of amazon. Same with the 10ohm 50w resistor.

Specifically I bought:
relays
and
resisitor

Thank you! Anything special for the high beams on a 62?
 
Finally pulled out my Tangen harness this last weekend, cleaned up my factory wiring and adapted it to my JW Speaker headlights using the method @amw2320 finalized. Function is perfect, and eliminated a ton of mess around my headlights. Now my low beams stay on when I kick on my highs, which they didn't do with the Tangen harness. To adapt the high beams, all I did was swap the male terminals on the JW Speaker harnesses to match the hot and ground terminals on the factory high beam connectors. Yeah I coulda just flipped them over and plugged them in, but my OCD got the best of me. Another OCD moment, I moved around the leads in the low beam harnesses to match standard H4/9006 headlight pinouts. Necessary? Nope. Just me being anal.

The simple adapter for the right side low beam. The unused male terminals were put in the connector just to provide a little extra hold in the female (vehicle) connector and keep the connectors from coming apart.
LED Headlight Wiring 01 - Right Side Low.jpg


The adapter for the left side low beam. The connector on the right of the picture connects to a relay I mounted to the inner fender panel.
LED Headlight Wiring 02 - Left Side Low.jpg


I used 14AWG wire, which was overkill for the small amount of current these lights draw. Could've used 16AWG easily, but all I had in my good silicon insulated wire was 14AWG, so I used that. Came out nice and clean though, so no complaints.


Very nice going from this...
LED Headlight Wiring 03 - Tangen Harness.jpg



to this...
LED Headlight Wiring 04 - Right Side Low Installed.jpg
 
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Can’t thank @amw2320 enough for this thread. I have never touched electrical in my life before this.
Two LED High Beam//Low Beam harnesses which plug into the factory high beam socket reversing polarity at the factory high beam socket built(One already installed before I took the photo)
One passenger side “high beam dash indicator light enabler” harness built and ready to plug into the low beam factory socket
One divers side “high beam dash indicator light enabler” harness built and ready to be installed

Hope to finish the job tonight and fingers crossed that I don’t release the magic blue smoke of death in my electronics 👍

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B8BE8A2F-D4D0-4C24-B7CE-960FBF136E42.jpeg
 
IIRC, one of the reasons for relays originally was because the factory harness had voltage loss resulting in weak illumination. With this simple setup guessing that’s not an issue due to low power requirements of the LEDs?
 
IIRC, one of the reasons for relays originally was because the factory harness had voltage loss resulting in weak illumination. With this simple setup guessing that’s not an issue due to low power requirements of the LEDs?
That is correct. You only need one relay now and that's to send current through the resistor to trigger the high beam indicator when you "flash" the high beams by pulling back on the stalk.
 
so the high beam indicator still works when they are on full time?

also are any of you running the housings with heaters? just wondering if there’s anything special in the wiring for that. i have my lights but haven’t opened them yet to play. i’ve been waiting for a few other parts to get my fender and light surround fixed after meeting a deer a little too close
 
so the high beam indicator still works when they are on full time?

also are any of you running the housings with heaters? just wondering if there’s anything special in the wiring for that. i have my lights but haven’t opened them yet to play. i’ve been waiting for a few other parts to get my fender and light surround fixed after meeting a deer a little too close
Yep. When they're actually switched on (stalk pushed forward) the current for the indicator comes through the switch itself, from what I can tell with the wiring diagram. When in "flash" (stalk pulled back) the filament that would be there in a halogen high beam would also act as a resistor to direct some current back to the indicator. Without a resistor in place (and when using LEDs or an aftermarket relay harness like the Tangen harness I just took out) the headlight fuses would blow when you would flash the high beams.

The heated assemblies are wired in no differently than the non heated assemblies. I have the heated assemblies (8800 series). Only difference is internal to the housings. It's also thermostatically controlled so in warm weather the heating elements don't come on, resulting in even less current draw. Each assembly with heater on draws about 3.3A (just a hair shy of 40W at 12V), considerably less current than any halogen bulb or sealed beam.
 

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