freegdr

LOL...as long as theres still a fire in the furnace its all good.

cruiser54

This has been keeping me busy in the evenings.

squirrelnw

wire kit finally showed up, I know what I may be doing this upcoming weekend, I be doin the headlight upgrades

MirageMobile

I installed my Putco harness over the summer and last night I had my first problems with it.

The relays were "sticking" and I lost power while driving. I was able to get stopped and pull over to take a look and found that simply tapping on the relays was causing my lows or highs to flicker. I will be getting some replacements today.

AutobotXJ

Thanks for the update on your putcos going out on you. Thats always one of my fears since my light switch shorted is driving my family home on our dark, rainy mountain road. Is it just the relays that went bad or bad connections? I am hoping my fuses help save my relays.

DaBeebs84

The part number for the borg warner relays is 4136. My problem was not the relays themselves but the wiring and who ever crimped the wires. I got new internals and replaced them. Everything is good as it should have been. Check the wires on the female part....

cruiser54

Interesting. Thanks.

MirageMobile

Ok, after a more thorough diagnosis, I would have to say that it is not the relay.

When I had the issue a few days ago, you could breathe on the connection and the lights would go out.

Today, I could only get the low beams to flicker once on what I thought was the "good" relay.

Therefore, it's gotta be the female ends of the harness, like dabeeds suggests, but after a bunch of yanking and jiggling (), I couldn't get em to malfunction.

Aljay

Did just the harness ... WOW huge difference !
Had one issue it was just a wire pulled out of the high beam relay .
Going to go back and loom it Alittle better I did not have any loom with me .

DaBeebs84

I didn't do a bunch of wiggling.....when I would tap on the low relay, the lights would flicker. I took the relay off and then started looking at the connectors. That is when I noticed the wire was not properly fitted to the clamp.

huntingman2706217

Just tossing this in... $23 ebay shipped headlights... Glass housings... H4 bulbs... Little blue 194 bulb which ill swap for nice white led bulbs I got and hook to my parking lights... Glass looks sealed nicely... Bulbs are a pain to get the clip off but ill do it... Im sure they are not quality bulbs but ill swap for silverstars or the like later... When they burn out in a week... Lol... But for $23 why not? Oh and harness otw come payday...

k4ylr

For those interested. I have Rampage housings and originally ordered up the Putco harness. I had problems with it right off the bat with the harness and relays.

Ordered up the ARB harness and haven't looked back since. I could hear and feel the relays in the Putco harness click on/off when I jiggled the relay-end of the harness. Sure the ARB harness is a bit pricey but its damn well worth it for running lights.

squirrelnw

so I am sittin here pissed. new harness low beams do not work, switched relays around and no change, high beams work but still no low beams, suspect the relay connector is bad but dont know how to check wiring.

test lite from battery to relay connector

on battery neg.... I have test lite working at white wire, nothing at blk, red, yellow
on battery pos.......I have test lite working at red blk, yellow, nothing at white wire

so something is bad somewhere. and when I take relay and push it in slowly into connector I can hear it buzzing till I completely make connection, switching relays does not change anything. high beam works, low beam does not...

cut into yellow wire at relay connection, no power at yellow wire, thats my low beam out from the relay far as I can tell. prior poster said they had a bad connection there. how do I get the yellow wire out of the connector so I can fix it..

cruiser54

Got factory foglights on your 2000? If so, temporarily remove the foglight fuse.

If that fixes it, read this for the permanent fix:

Courtesy of EZEARL
　
　
　
Suppose to be the fix:
If you have stock fog lights on a 97+ and upgrade your harness in a manner that uses the factory wiring to trigger some new relays, your fog lights will have and/or cause issues unless you make some additional modifications to address the problem. It doesn't matter if you use a plug and play harness like the eautoworks or if you split your harness open and completely strip out all the extra factory wiring like I did. The factory fog circuit will cause your new lighting system to not work properly.

If you do nothing, your headlights will work as mentioned above. Low beams will be fine, but after you turn on your high beams, they will not turn off again until you completely turn off your headlights. Big issue here is that when you switch back to low beams, both the high beam and low beam filament will be remain powered causing your bulbs to endure 115W worth of heat output instead of the 55W or 60W that they are designed for. From what I've read this can cause them to overheat and burn out within minutes.

So what is happening? If you look at the driver's side headlight plug (and you have factory fogs) you will notice there are two red wires coming out of one of the terminals. One is a small 18g Red wire which sadly is the stock high beam wire. The other is an even smaller 20g Red wire which ties into Fog Lamp Relay #1 in the PDC. Please keep in mind that Fog Lamp Relay #1 is NOT used to provide battery power to the fog lights the way we commonly use them with aftermarket lighting. It is located before the switch and simply cuts power to the Fog Light Switch unless the Headlight Switch and Beam Selector Switch are in the proper positions. It does this as law dictates that you can't run your high beams and fogs at the same time. Though not a problem here in CA, I've read that states with safety inspection programs will fail your vehicle if the lights don't operate this way.

I dug into the wiring diagrams but had to have kastein help me decipher them because there was something about this circuit that just wasn't making much sense to me. I still don't understand the function of Fog Lamp Relay #1 in its entirety, but we're only concerned with the part that is affected by the headlight harness anyways. Essentially, when your Headlight Switch is off, the relay coil receives no power and therefore won't allow your fog lights to come on. When your Headlight Switch is turned on, one side of the relay's coil receives 12V which causes the relay to activate and send power through to your Fog Light Switch. When you turn your high beams on, 12V is sent out to your headlight socket via the Beam Selector Switch, and then is sent back to the other side of the relay coil via the skinny Red wire on that shared terminal. This brings both sides of the relay coil to 12V, thus causing it to deactivate and turn off the Fog Light Switch. Weird huh? The factory designed it so that the relay is off with both sides at 0V, on with one side at 12V, and then off again with both sides at 12V. While it makes perfect sense now, this is the part that was confusing me.

So what's the problem then? Well, it turns out that even when the high beams are off, there is still approximately 5V on that skinny Red trigger wire for some reason which I still don't understand. While this is obviously not a problem in the factory configuration, it becomes a problem when you are using the high beam wire (which is directly tied into the skinny Red wire) to trigger your aftermarket high beam relay. A typical automotive relay requires approximately 8V to activate and needs to drop to somewhere below 1-5V to deactivate. When you first turn on your lights there is no problem because the phantom 5V is not enough to activate your new high beam relay. When you turn your high beams on, your new relay gets 12V and kicks on. When you go to turn off your high beams, the phantom 5V keeps the new relay from deactivating and voilą, your high beams are stuck on...

So how do we fix this? There are a few common suggestions that are out there that I just wasn't happy with, and a few that sort of work, but not as required by law:

1. Don't use your high beams, new lights are bright enough anyways (OK...)
2. If you have to use your high beams, turn your headlights off briefly to get them turn off (PITA)
3. Pull various fuses (lose your fog lights)
4. Pull the fog lamp relay (again, lose your fog lights)
5. Modify the fog lamp relay (fog lights work, but won't cut out when your high beams are on?)
6. Install a jumper in place of the fog light relay (fog lights work, but switch is always hot?)

One post I saw got it right though. lilredxj99 mentioned it in another thread which I didn't find until after the fact. The details were a little fuzzy and I still thought the issue deserved some further explanation so that's why I just wrote this damn novel...

Oh yeah, so the right way to do it... Cut the 20g Red Fog Lamp Relay #1 ground/trigger wire at the back of the driver's side headlight plug. Extend this wire using your preferred method so that it is long enough to reach your new aftermarket high beam relay. Splice it into the 87 pin (output) of your new high beam relay. If you have two 87's (which is ideal), either one is OK. Do not however use 87a if your relay has it!

Yep, that's it... Your high beams will now turn off when they're supposed to, your fog lights will turn on/off when they're supposed to, and your low beams will continue to work as they're supposed to. Sure you could have skipped all the way down to the bottom and found your answer, but you wanted to know how/why it works, right?

squirrelnw

same issue here, did you ever find the issue with yours???? tryin to do install now. all tore apart relays check out fine when put on high beam and click when I install into connector with power on.. but nothin out on the yellow wires. which I believe are the low beam... cant get wires out of connector to check them