Wiring problems with spotties

Brian, It sounds as though may have had a dead short somwhere in the circuit. Did you check the lamp connections inside the lights for this problem as you may have somthing floating around in there. If not in there back track all your cabling and connections to your power source.

Dinodog

Hi Brian
Now many watts are your spotties rated at? If they are ratted at 100 watts each then the two spoties running together will draw around 16 amps, so a 30 amp relay would be ok. My guess is you have a positive wire touching an earth somewre. Check all your connections for bare wires.
Regads steve

Brian,

If you are melting a 30amp fuse there is something wrong with the wiring. Replacing it with a bigger fuse or relay is not going to fix it, only cause a fire.

Start all over.
A wire from the + side of the battery through a 30amp fuse to the #30 on the relay.
A wire from the - side of the battery to the #86.
A wire from the active side of the hi- beam will go to #85.
Wires from #87 should go to the positive side of the driving lights. Check to see if the light are polarity sensitive, ie, the globes are earthed to the body of the lights or do they have two wires that have to be connected. If the - earth wire is mounted to the lights than the other wire must be +pos.
A switch must be placed in the wiring so that the driving lights can be turned off when the hi-beam is on. I have run the - neg wire from the battery through the switch.

Wayne

As other have said something is wrong with the wiring and needs to be checked out first before changing relays etc. A 30 A relay should be more than enough for two spotties. I would also use a 20 or 25A fuse, the fuse should be the weakest point in the system so it goes before anything else does. I'd be worried that the fuse and fuseholder melted rather than just blowing the fuse.

The fuse holder melting could just be a rubbish fuse holder or a bad connection in it somewere. with the spotlights on you should have positive at 30-87-87. and positive and negative either way around on 85-86. if youre missing one of those signals than you have a problem try checking were the switching taps into the high beam.

What sort of fuse holder? One of the older glass ones or blade fuses?

If the holder itself has melted there is a point of resistance that is getting way too hot. It doesn't take much resistance at 16-18 Amps to have a very hot spot in the circuit.

I'd doubt there's a dead short any where as a dead short would blow the fuse almost instantaneously and nothing would have time to get hot enough to start melting components around it.

I would suggest a change to a good quality blade fuse holder if it's not already blades. Something like 4mm dia wire and keep the runs short to maximise voltage to the filaments (therefore getting brigher lights). Keep the relay close to the lights and make the switching wire longer if necessary. Thicker is definately better. If the wirings any smaller than 4mm dia (and they did come from Supercrap - was the wiring included?) then it all needs to go in the bin.

The wiring from the low beam cct to the dash switch and back to the relay coil and the relay earth can be smaller as it's only carrying about an amp at best.

The wiring from the battery to the relay switched terminals and on to the spotties, then from the spotties to earth is the high current side of things.

Dave