Four eyes of fire - headlight and harness upgrade on my 62

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ballardcruiser said:
OK, now I'm really confused. How come Slee offered a specific 60 (or 80) series wiring harness when all these other aftermarket/IPF harnesses seem to be for any old two driving light/two high beam setup (60, 80, whatever)? Goes back to my earlier question of if an 80 series Slee harness would work on a 60 series setup.
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I think you answered your own question. Slee offered a specific kit because they're a LC specific company. IPF's kit is a generic kit, which is made for a broader market. Although the IPF is not LC specific it is basically the same kit Slee makes/made.

Slee's 80 series kit will not work in a 60 (IIRC the only reason was the difference in connectors). I asked when I was in the market because at the time I was talking to Slee about their kits they didn't think they had any 60 series kits left. It just so happened they had a couple left and I snagged one up.
 
ballardcruiser said:
OK, now I'm really confused. How come Slee offered a specific 60 (or 80) series wiring harness when all these other aftermarket/IPF harnesses seem to be for any old two driving light/two high beam setup (60, 80, whatever)? Goes back to my earlier question of if an 80 series Slee harness would work on a 60 series setup.

I emailed Slee so once I hear back I'll post my findings. If it's nearly plug-and-play and under 100 bucks (so I have money left over for good lights) I'll take it! I just don't want to have to learn soldering. Even if it's simple, I'd find a way to screw it up.
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The FJ-62 wiring harness is kind of a pain due to the fact that it switches ground (negative) instead of positive to turn the lights on. That's one of the reasons that there are 62 specific harness. I'm not sure if 60s switch ground.
 
Well, after messing around with the harness off and on for a couple of days, I finally have it working right. I had to make some corrections to the layout to get them right…..took some thinking to figure out what was wrong.

Wow, what a difference the harness and new headlight units make! I didn’t drive around with the silverstars on the upgraded harness, but I do have a comparison photo below showing the improvement of the harness alone. Driving around with the Bosch units I am really happy (although I need to get a 30A fuse for the highbeam relay…). The highbeam indicator light in the dash lights with the new harness, although it is a bit dimmer than it was stock.

Below are the comparison shots. I was planning to take some “down the road” photos, but after messing with circuitry, I got fed up, and didn’t bother.

Photo 1: On the right is the stock harness powering the silverstar sealed units, on the left is the same sealed unit running off the upgraded harness. This shot is on lowbeam, I couldn’t get a similar shot for highbeam, as the upgraded harness wouldn’t put out highbeam at the same time the factory harness was under load.

Photos 2 and 3: On the right is the upgraded harness powering the Bosch H4 unit, on the left is the upgraded harness powering the silverstars. Again, these are lowbeam shots. You can clearly see the crisp vertical cut-off of the Bosch units, and how they throw light higher on the right where it helps illuminate signs, pedestrians, animals and such without blinding oncoming drivers. The silverstars on the other hand appear to throw light higher on the side of oncoming traffic. Photo 3 has the truck positioned closer to the wall to distinguish between the output of the 2 units a bit better, and is at a faster shutter speed.
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Photo 1 and 2: On the right is the upgraded harness powering the Bosch unit highbeams, on the left are the Silverstar highs powered by the upgraded harness. The 2 shots were taken at different shutter speeds to show the output and focus of the lights.
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Yeah, it really is a night and day difference isn't it :D With my homemade harness upgrade and the Bosch H4s I occassionally get people flashing me thinking that I've got my high beams on (yes, my lights are aimed correctly per the guide on Daniel's site). I hardly ever use my PIAA fog lights anymore unless it's really miserable conditions.
 
After a couple hours of highway driving at night, I am REALLY happy with the upgrade. :clap: The low beams have a really nice pattern (no flashing from on-comers so far) and the high beams throw sh!tbags of light down the road, absolutely amazing :bounce::bounce2:

Incidently, if anyone is driving around in the prairies and sees some dazed whitetails, you can figure out who is to blame :hhmm:



For anyone looking this up later, here is another thread that is developing with wiring diagrams (post 11 has a good diagram at the time I write this):

https://forum.ih8mud.com/60-series-wagons/196733-fj60-headlight-wiring-harness.html

It is for a 60s 2 lamp system, but the addition of a third relay (the one without an 87a terminal) to downstream from the second (to provide for the higher amp draw of the 62s 4 high beam system, switched off the 87 terminal of the second relay) would bring it inline with what I have. If you put one of these together, make sure your fuses are adequate for the draw. I started with a 20 amp for the high beams (relay 3), and only clued in that I needed a 30 (about 26 amp draw with the bulbs I got) after it blew on the maiden voyage.
 
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Just got home from 12+ hours on the highway (most in the dark). :steer: I really love the new lights. The low beams take a bit of getting used to, and some adjust on the go with weight in the back, but the high beams are just frikin amazing! :cool:

I anyone else does up a set like this, definitely wire them off the alternator. At the battery, the voltage doesn't fluctuate (13.4v low beam, 13.4v high beam after a twitch as the regulator adjusts) while my 55w fog lights wired to the battery drop the voltage 13.2v or 13.1v.
 
It looks like HL28202 is your plug and play option (for a 62) from Susquehanna.

Daniel Stern only sells component kits, not complete harnesses. If you order one from them, make sure you know if the terminal layout is set up for stock sealed beams, or upgraded outboard units (H4). The Bosch H4s I got came with an adapter to run off the stock terminal layout, but I just wired the harness for the H4 layout.

One of the other mudders is working on making kits, but is in the design stage. https://forum.ih8mud.com/60-series-wagons/194958-light-harnes.html
 
Since my other thread piggy-backed off this I figured I would post my FJ60 results here as well. Like RockDoc's 62, I was also very happy with the results of my harness (4crawler) and IPF headlamps and 60w/80w IPF bulbs (from cruiseroutfitters.com). I know it sounds like a broken record, but the difference is incredible. Quite honestly, I don't know how you could put any more light in front of you. Once you do the harness and bulb upgrade, I can see no reason to add additional lights - I really don't think you would gain anything (except maybe redundancy). The light is so bright and so full, anything more would be diminishing returns.

You can do the whole setup for a 60 for as little as $150-$200 (harness, lights, and bulbs). I just can't see why anybody would spend $$$ on additional lights before doing this.
 
you could also just run an aux wire from the alt to the battery, but connecting the light harness there should help keep the voltage up on the lights.
 
slcfj62 said:
RocDoc's excellent writeup sold me on a Daniel Stern head lamp upgrade. But when I got the goodies from Mr. Stern, things didn't work by following his directions. I found the instructions to be incorrect for my fj62. So, I redesigned it and posted up what I did on this thread:

https://forum.ih8mud.com/60-series-wagons/274362-fj62-daniel-stern-headlight-upgrade-problems.html

So, if your efforts to follow his instructions don't yield fruit, you might try mine.
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Love the hand-drawn schematic, please post it up here if you like. FWIW, the instructions that Daniel sent me had a couple issues too, I would have assumed he took my feedback and corrected/clarified them, so I kept quiet. Looks like he didn't fix them. :frown: If anyone wants to know what I did to get mine working, PM me and I'll look up my notes.
 
I want to do this upgrade to my truck as well. What exactly did you order from Daniel Stern. I would like to send him an e-mail and have all the parts ready so there is no guessing or conversation. Is there a part number kit?
 
slcfj62 said:
Daniel Stern terms himself a vehicle lighting consultant, and that he is. He does not have off the shelf kits. He works with you to determine your goals and objectives with your vehicle, and then will recommend various solutions. You will work with him to determine what is best for your needs and that is what he will sell you. In my case he recommended projector style low beam headlamps which I guess are the bees knees. However, they are about 6 inches deep, so would require relocation of the battery, cutting holes, etc. I wasn't up for that, so we settled on H4 (Hi/Lo) and H1 (Hi beam only) headlamps. He does have a wiring kit sans the wires that I also ordered. So you provide the wires and make all the connections--requires soldering. So that is what my write up covers: the wiring of the components for H4/H1 headlights. The entire consulting process takes a while, as Mr. Stern is not always quick on the email.
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The man definitely keeps himself busy. He's helping me find a good solution for foglamps and driving lights for my Plymouth right now, and then we move on to better lighting for my 62. He's not a huge fan of the Hella H4 reflectors, so I'll likely 86 those in favor of his recommendation.
 
Can someone come up with a list of parts (all inclusive) based on his recomendation for a 62 that is BUDGET MINDED? Having him provide the same recommendation to each of us individually is not time effective.

Did I mention the low budget part? My 62's lights are so pathetic that when I shine one of these out of my windshield, it is a significantly brighter spot on the road than the headlights.

New 200 lumen light at Home Depot - CandlePowerForums

Well, actually it is the nearly identical 3W 145-lumen 3AAA Cree, but i can't find much about it online.
 
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