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Offline Yoshi

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Wire Choice Help!
« on: January 09, 2009, 20:15:21 »
Ive just bought meself a lightbar and lights off ebay.  I am obviously gonna need to wire them up but i dont know what ampage of wire to use.

The setup is going to be a 3 way switch, pos 1 - lights on, pos 2 - lights off, pos 3 - main beam.

I am also going to run this through 2 relays, so a relay for pos 1 and a seperate relay for pos 3.

So what i need to know is will 11A 0.5mm wire be ok for this, they are standard small rectangular ring lights, think they are 55's??

Any help would be gratefully recieved!
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Offline Hightower

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Re: Wire Choice Help!
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2009, 22:29:58 »
Each lamp will pull just over 4.5A (55W / 12V), so you will need at least 10A per pair.  I have two 25A pairs running my lamps (set of 3 and set of 4) and this works just fine.

HTH
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Offline KingWolf

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Re: Wire Choice Help!
« Reply #2 on: January 10, 2009, 21:10:50 »
If ALL 4 lamps are to be run through the same relay then they will be drawing a total of 18.3 amps.... (55w each lamp x4 = 220 watts. divide this by 12volts and you get 18.3 amps) so you'll need to ensure your wire can handle this current. You might want to wire them up in pairs so you only draw 9.1 amps through each relay... Obviously each relay will need to be rated high enough to cope with the correct load. But it's all down to your own personal preference.

For instance......I have my light bar (4x55w lamps) wired up all together through one 30amp relay and using 20 amp thinwall cable.

Mark.
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Offline Range Rover Blues

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Re: Wire Choice Help!
« Reply #3 on: January 11, 2009, 00:54:46 »
You only need one relay or one for each pair of lights, wire the swuitch up with the common terminal going to the relay then each of the either/or terminals going to a high beam source and an ignition or sidelight source resectively to give you the 1-0-1 on-off-main switching.
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Offline Wanderer

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Re: Wire Choice Help!
« Reply #4 on: January 11, 2009, 10:20:35 »
A lot depends on whether or not that wire is rated as continuous use.
You should play on the safe side and double up as if you're running them at night then you'll be running them at continuous. If you are running an eart alongside make sure that has the same capabilities.
It save a fire and also saves on volt drop, the less current carrying capabilities (note I nearly did but didn't say thinner) the wire has then there will be more volt drop.
There's also grouping factor to take into account if you are running multiple cables together as well as ambient heat.

Ed
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