Additional worklights

[deepsnow]

I have mounted one rear facing floodlight (built in switch)using the existing spare hot wire that NH factory installs on CII Boomers. Is it possible to run a second light from that same harness(parallel wiring) and have both lights on without blowing a fuse or worse?

 

[hwp]

What is the wattage of the light? And what is the size of the fuse? Watts divided by volts gives you the amps. Add up the watts and divide by 12 to get the amps. Unless you are using very high watt lights you should be OK. I run two floodlights front and two floodlights back, a flashing light, a heater water circulation pump and a heater fan on a 15 amp fuse with no problems.

 

[Kodiak]

Yes you could run a relay at the end of the factory switcched wire and then run a pair of lights off of that.

 

[MikePA]

I hooked up 2 flood lights from the same pig tail and a relay came in the KC HiLites kit. For the second set of lights I put on the roll bar (they face front when the roll bar is up), I ran a new circuit directly to the battery. It also used a relay.

 

[deepsnow]

Thanks everyone for the info. Plan to mount the 2nd light on the underside of the top of the ROPs utlilizing four lengths of galavanized angle iron,snowblower light already mounted on a swival bracket & bicycle inner tube(salvaged from my graveyard pile) plus some U bolts. Family members have bugged me about my piles of misc "junk". Net cost for this upgrade will be the U bolts.

 

[Mrwurm]

/w3tcompact/icons/hmm.gif

What function does the relay perform? I've wired up a lot of lights and never used one. What will it do for me?

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Hi,

Mrwurm asks:

<font color=blue>What function does the relay perform? I've wired up a lot of lights and never used one. What will it do for me?</font color=blue>

Provided that the switch you use is rated for the current it will break, then the realy will do nothing but complicate the wiring, in the tractor work light application, in my opinion.

An example where a realy is really useful, is in a higher voltage circuit, where you want to control to be a lower [read safer] voltate. Such as control of a 480 volt motor, using 110 volts going to a start/stop push button.

For the simple control of work lights on the tractor, if you have an on/off switch that is rated for the current, a simple switch should work fine. If it would eventually fail, cheaper and easier to just replace it when that happens. My guess is that it will be years before that failure happens.

Now if you try to exceed the switch rating, then you can expect rapid failure. You will not notice any difference in light brightness whether you use a relay or switch...unless there is a problem with the device, and in that case you will also develop heat at the failure point, if the lights are dimming. That power taken away from the lights has to be used somewhere...

That's the way I have seen things happen, for what that's worth.

Bill in Pgh, PA

 

[Mrwurm]

Ok, sounds like maybe my furnace thermostat uses a relay. Very low voltage going to the thermostat activates the 110 volt blower motor and electric igniter. Sound right?

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Yes,

And I was thinking of another example. Controlling high current rather than voltage.

The starting circuit on our tractors/trucks/cars...

The key switch activates a relay that has a high current capacity, but the same voltage of operation. A small current passes through the key switch, causing a relay to activate, and a high current to be applied to the stater motor.

I also got my posts confused...and thought I was in the light bar thread...but nothing changes anyway /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Bill in PGH PA

 

[Spencer]

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.tractorbynet.com/cgi-bin/compact/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=custom&Number=114362&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1>Here</A> is the post I made about hooking up two lights on my TC33D.