Boomer,
What type of battery are you using? If you pulled 4 hours with 64 amps of lightbars, 2-3 amps for the LED signs, and 2-3 amps for the music, thats about 70 amps an hour.
The best deep cycle marine batterives I’ve spotted are around 130amp/hour.
Or do you have a bank of batteries in parallel?
I’ve been doing some looking and I think I have found a few neat products for Power Distribution. A company called Transportation Safety Technologies has these relay assemblies for sale.
http://www.tst-corp.com/catalog/power-distribution-centers.html
I think that these will be a slick way to supply power to any number of components. I got the idea form a web site called Project Responder. It seems that web page has all kinds of good info for emergency lights.
do you pretty much have to drill a hole in the top of your car, in order to feed those thick cables from the light bars? I don’t see any other way to do it, and be able to hide the wiring. Bryan has a piece of pvc pipe between his bar and the cable, going into his car. Any better or easier methods?
If I could do it again, I would just drill behind the luggage rack feet instead of feeding cable across the roof to the rear hatch. That cable flopping around has really scuffed up the clearcoat under the roof rack.
Would this be the correct way to wire the relay from an independent power source?
This diagram is a little better,
Make sure to use those fuses!
But, I don’t want to run the power from my car. I’m installing a second battery on the roof rack. I want the whole thing to run independent of the car.
Then that’s fine, connect all your ground wires back to the battery - terminal. Just make sure the “master” ground wire is a pretty heavy gauge if it will be shared by multiple devices.
Keep in mind though, if you’re using a strobe, halogen, or motor driven light bar, it will eat up the useful capacity of even a marine battery pretty quickly without the alternator pumping in power.
Nothing sucks more than being over a 1000 miles from home at Dragoncon with a dead roof rack battery,
Thanks for the advice I"ll remember to keep a float charger and a spare on hand.
I was wondering if some of you electrical gurus could help me out. I just got a Fedral signal Vista light bar model X132H821A and I cannot figure out how to wire the thing. I know I’ll need to build a switch box but my question is there a single + wire going to the bar or does the power cord branch off? I do know which wire is the ground but all the other wires, solid red included looks like they would be connected to the switches. I was able to get a wiring diagram but I can’t figure it out. If anyone has the time to take a look at it and let me know their thoughts (with the exception of I bit off more than I can chew, I’m realizing that now) I would appreciate it lots. here’s the wiring diagram:
Also since this has the red and blue lenses I know I need to have them covered while driving but I also need to have it removable for the vehicle as I use the car for work and can’t always keep it on the top.
Thanks for any insight you can provide,
Bill
The big red and black wires should go to the battery + (red) and ground (black)
The smaller wires proabably all control relays in the bar, although being fused at 10 and 15 amps, I wonder.
Can you stretch out the wires and take a picture of what you’re working with?
I’ll do that when I get home from work, I thought there should be a big red wire as well but there isn’t.
If there is no big red wire, then it’s proabably a case of needing to power and run every individual component from one main switchbox on your interior. A large common ground wire only makes sense in that case.
It’s a compromise lightbar manufactuers pull:
Cheap bar, but you have to buy a high end switch box seperate,
vs
Expensive bar with relays inside.
Most galls switchboxes only push 10amps per circuit, so you might have to go retro.
Crap! guess I’m gonna have to figure out how to build one. I’m going to talk to my Dad he was an electrician in the navy maybe he’ll have some insight thanks I’ll still post those pictures when I get home from work.
Here are the pictures of the wiring inside the bar:
here is the bar itself, becuase this is going on an off road type vehicle I wanted something older and with a little more “meat” than some of the other bars out there
Here are the insides, the only way I could get decent pictures is to do by section:
And here are all the wires, I know the big black one is the ground but that’s about it:
Picked it up for 100.00 bucks and I’m beginning to see why..it’s pain to wire. Any input on how to wire this would be greatly appreciated!
thanks
Honestly, doesn’t look like any more of a pain to wire than the ones I have on the volvo. Essentially each one of those wires is most likely a different function on the lightbar. My suggestion is, while it is off the vehicle, find some sort of 12 volt battery (tractor, car, etc.) and ground the big black wire and touch each off the colored wires to the positive side one by one and write down what function each color corresponds with.
Are you only going to be running one lightbar or two? On mine, I have two lightbars, and I had to wire a switch box for each one. When I tried only using one box for both bars, they were pulling such a large amount of amperage that I was burning up switches and fuses left and right, even with relays installed into each function.
Feel free to PM me if you need help.
Im counting about 1500+ watts of power with everything running, more at startup peak.
Thats going to be about 125 amps. Be sure your vehicles altenator can handle it. It is a slick bar and you got a great deal for sure though, our squad’s utility truck has one, but thats a ford F350, so plenty of power to go around.
Looking at the wires:
Black: common ground
Large colored wires: + power individual components or groups of components
Small colored wires: + power relays for the components of matching colored wires
Like RA24 says, get a battery and press test, just dont be shocked if it throws a couple sparks when you first make contact as these pull some power.
Also, a little headlight cleaning compound and a buffer can take years off the lenses.
I’m about to install 2 MXL7000’s by Code 3 on my hearse. I found a link describing how to construct a DIY switch box using project boxes and heavy duty illuminated toggles from radioshack. I’m assuming I need relays as well right?
My question would be how would that be wired up from the light bar. All I’ve done so far, is ran the ground wire straight to the ground on the battery, and ran the others wires to the poitive just to set the bars.
I want to make this as simple as possible. I know I need grommetts and some silicone sealant to seal the holes. I just want the cleanest and simplest install possible.
I do know that I’m not really all that concerned with having a bunch of different “patterns”. Just 2-3 switches would be fine. Or ever how many I’d need to get all the lights going with little effort on my part.
I got the lightbar wired up and running. I want thank you guys for helping me get it this far. I’m still not too sure about the small cluster of wires and how to wire them up, but I thought I’d post a video of the bar in action. It’s not on the car yet it’s just on a pair of saw horses. I did discover a few bulbs burned out so I’m going to get those replaced before the parade.
We did test it on the cars battery it appears to handle it quite well, the alternator did have any trouble keeping up with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkVZAL9Hwns
Also added some music as it can be boring to watch a light bar go through it’s paces.
Thanks agian for everyone’s help! it was most appreciated, if anyone knows however how to wire the little ones please let me know.
Thanks agian!
I LOVE sweeping intersection lights SO MUCH. So fucking cool. Glad you managed to get it wired up.