Holley Retrobright Headlights making me feel insane (1 Viewer)

[jebb]

This isn't even about dealing with the crazy wiring of the FJ62 headlights, I'm just talking about some new out of the box Holley Retrobrights I'm trying to install.

Everywhere I look, the pinout for the connector looks like this:

If you've got the pins facing you, the ground is on the left. The right terminal lights up the high beams. Putting aside the high/low question for a second, if I wire it like this I get:

Ground on the left, +12V on the right, meter to double check, no light.

Meanwhile, if I use the right pin as ground:

I've tried three lights. It's making me feel really dumb. Anyone see what im missing here? I was honestly hoping just typing this up would make me see like "oh you're looking at it from the other side" or something but nope.

Hooked up to the output of the Holley relay harness, they don't work without swapping the pins around (and then they work fine). I can of course just make this work but it's making me think I'm doing something very wrong.

The next bit: the middle pin is supposed to be the low beam. The outer pin the high beam. But the middle pin clearly lights up the high beams:

While the outer pin does not:

It's very obvious if you power both of them. Powering the middle pin makes the second light light up.

ON TOP OF THAT, if the headlight is right side up, (meaning, the Holley logo on the lens and the DOT SAE HR LED VOL printing are right side up), the high beam is below the low beam.

Of course I could install it upside down it's just making me feel like I'm missing some very basic thing that's going to cause a problem.

 

[lukesbaitshop]

I’m in my garage installing the same lights right now. I have the same issue. All plugged in and the brights work but not the lows.

 

[CarterTheFarter]

If all four are the same, I would say you are not crazy. Just pull the pins on the female connector and switch around where they need to be. As far as the the brights being below the lows, I would install them right side up and look at the light pattern on tour garage door at night. I don't think you'll want to install them upside down. Trial and error. Report back when you figure them out, Im thinking about swapping my h1/h4 lights for these.

 

[CruiserTrash]

Perhaps I’ll be corrected but the low beam’s light comes from the top of a reflector (so it reflects towards the ground) and the high beam comes from the bottom of the reflector (so it points up).

I’m a 60 guy so I don’t know the four eyes stuff, but stock one pair of headlights is low beam and the other pair high beam correct? And so on these Holleys each one has a low AND high beam? I don’t even want to know the wiring involved in getting that to work.

 

[jebb]

but stock one pair of headlights is low beam and the other pair high beam correct?

On a stock 62, the outer pair of lamps has low beams AND highbeams, and the inner pair has just high beams IIRC.

One of the many crazy bits about the stock 62 lights that's the reason there's so many headlights on here is the sealed beams don't care about polarity, so rather than switching the powered leg, the stock setup powers on pin with +12V whenever any lights are on, high or low, and the stalk on the steering column connects the ground legs to ground, depending if you're on high or low. But that's only for the outer lights. The high beams only have two pins, but a similar setup where the power pin has power when the lows OR highs are on, but the ground leg is only connected to ground when you push the stalk out for high beam mode IIRC)

And so on these Holleys each one has a low AND high beam? I don’t even want to know the wiring involved in getting that to work.

Holley sells a unit with a normal 3 pin connector where if you connect the circuit across the low pin, you get the low beams, if you connect it across the high pin, you get the high AND low beams, low beam pin status irrelevant. (part # LFRB120-1)

Holley also sells a unit that's just a high beam. I'm not sure if this means it only has a high beam, or if it only has two pins and both beams are on all the time, as I've never seen one up close. (part # LFRB121)

On the wiring, I was thinking that I'd just set up both the inside and the outside lights to run in all four low beams, all four highbeams mode, and given the lower power draw of the LED's, I figured I'd just use the Holley H840 harness with relays like this:
* the relay doesn't care about polarity, so on the control side of the relay, put the +12V from the factory harness on the relay ground pin.
* put the switched grounds of the factory harnes to the other two relay pins (Basically just using some H4 pigtails to swap the left and right pins, leave the middle the same

So the 'common' relay pin gets the +12V from the truck harness when the lights are on, and the grounds control which relay is closed.

My expectation was that the lights would just plug straight into the light plugs on the harness, but like I said, the plugs seem to work backwards, so I figured I'd just swap the pins.

So far though, when I hook it up lke that, the lows and highs are the same. I haven't checked if it's that both are on or just the lows (there's no way to drive just the highs as far as I can tell), because I ran out of time to mess around with it.

More to come...

 

[duncanrm]

Ground on the left, +12V on the right, meter to double check, no light.

When testing for 12V+ (Batt) or 12V- (Earth) avoid using a digital meter, the high impedance nature of their inputs are insanely misleading in an automotive environment - instead use a Test Lamp with an incandescent globe

Reserve the digital meter for when you want to confirm an exact voltage (eg charging issues) or for measuring current or resistance.

 

[jebb]

Ok, I figured what didn't work the way I thought it did, on the harnesses at least.

I'm trying to install these in a all four lows, all four highs way.

The Holley H840 harness output plug has two pins besides the ground, one's red and one is white, so there's a red relay and a white relay.
red relay closed, white relay open: red output is 12V, white output is 0
red relay open, white relay closed: red output is 0, white output is 12V

so far so good. the twist is when you energize both relays:

red relay closed, white relay closed: red output 12V, white output 0

I'm not sure what it is about closing both relays at once that makes this happen, but it means that trying control the relay with the outer headlight connector the straightforward way isn't going to work, because the low beam ground stays connected to ground when the high beams are on.

The headlights run both lights if the high beam pin is on, though, so all this means is that you have to set it up so that the red output on the relays is driving the highbeam pin on the headlights (I had assumed it wouldn't make any difference before and coincidentally had it the other way).

Now to figure out where to mount the relays AND then whether or not the put the headlights in upside down or not...

 

[jebb]

Ok, I went with right side up. It seems right I think because pointed at the front of my house the high beams light up higher. I don't have a good setup for aiming these during the day though, so that'll have to wait.

But they work, all four low, all four high.

 

[jebb]

Ok finally got dark enough to try em out. HUGE improvement over the old sealed beams that were in there. Still need to fine tune the aim but it's pretty nice to be able to see this time of year. I'm gonna write up some notes in a top level thread before I forget, hope it helps somebody in the future. I spent kind of an embarassing amount of time on this.

 

[jebb]

The real mystery: my high beam indicator in the dash lights up. I did not short the pin in the other connector through a big resistor or anything, I have no idea why this works.

 

[Seth S]

60 series land cruisers are ground switched. This means they always have power on the common and the headlight switch alters the ground for hi and low beams.

More common these days is common ground switched power. So many of these kits use wiring and relays to convert to common ground and switched power.

I didn’t see this mentioned above so I thought it might help.