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Advice For Wiring Angel Eye Halos To Parking Lights?
Ive got a simple set of white 80mm CCFL Angel Eyes (with just a pos and neg wire) on their way, and I want to mount them over my projectors and wire them to my parking lights.
I have done quite a bit of searching here on Azine and elsewhere but I can't find specifically what I'm looking for, I want the Angel eyes to turn on with the Parking Lights and Projectors.
Does anyone have any insight or photos or links on how to wire them to the parking lights?
This will be my first experience with headlight retrofitting, but I am teaming up with an experienced member of my locan Acurazine Chapter to do them.
Some people hate tap splices so they like to solder instead. I just use tap splices but it's best to remember a few things: (I learned my lesson having to take out the headlights several times for loose connections)
1) Get tap splices that are for thinner gauge wire. I think the standard ones are 18-20 gauge or something and you will probably need 22 gauge. (I think) If you don't do this it won't bite through the plastic insulation enough and any slight twisting of the wire will cause a loose contact.
2) Remember that once your insulation is cut you are leaving that wire exposed to corrosion especially since this is under the hood. Give it time and corrosion will ensue of course. Di-electric grease (silicone grease) is the best way to prevent this. (just a little bit is enough) I always do this over all my spliced connections.
3) The wiring harness behind the headlight gets quite a bit of engine heat. If you use low quality electrical tape around here, it will pretty much melt off in short order.
4) Once the angel-eyes are wired in this way there is no independent switch. This means they will ALWAYS be on with the headlights and that is going to eat up the life span of them. Also they will flash with your anti-theft arm/disarm. In my opinion this wasn't a big deal but it's just something to keep in mind. A switch is a bit more work but may be worth it to you.
I appreciate the insight. So you recommend that I use a tap splice and coat it with a bit of silicone grease, and then wrap the connections in some high temp electrical tape?
Yeah I'm fully aware of what having the halos wired to the parking lights will be like, I have done inspires that I wired to an independent switch - and I don't want to do another switch mod.
Thanks for the response man, that helps a lot.
Ill post photos of the finished product, will be doing the mod this Sunday.
Yep, that's what I recommend because any time I have done it this way, if you go back 3-4 yrs down the road you will see the difference. Open these connections up, the ones that have the grease are still in good shape. Ones without them have corroded and you will see sparks and flickering lights. It's just not a clean connection. So aside from keeping the moisture out, it also acts as a partial insulator. Then along with the electrical tape outside you're good. BTW if you buy premium 3M tap splices they have a model that already comes pre-greased internally. They make top notch stuff so that should tell you something.
I also go one step further and cover it all on the outside with wire loom. It keeps your work looking clean and bundled neatly while providing an extra layer of protection. My work always looks unnoticeable and stock even if you can't see it externally.
My pet peeve is seeing a mess of wires under a dashboard or hood. Just looks bad and it's just asking for major trouble to come your way. Do it right the first time!
I do alot of electrical work and i absolutely hate tap splices. It's better to cut and splice nice and tight then heat shrink and electrical tape to finish. You can always revert back and you won't cause any electrical problems with your car from aftermarket parts or shorts.
Hey fam, just following up on the halo install. Everything went very well and they have been working like a charm. Heres a brief writeup (sorry for only having a few pictures, its hard to grab the camera when you want to keep working).
Here are the halos that I used, they're simple white COB LED halos with a negative and positive wire with a resistor.
Like I mentioned above in this thread, I teamed up with a buddy from my local Azine chapter - so he handled the baking of the headlights, while I handled the mounting and wiring of the halos. I wired my halos to the parking light, the parking light wires are easy to locate, they are on the far left side of the passenger side headlight and the far right side of the drivers side headlight. I removed the factory electrical tape and wire loom, stripped the negative and positive wires (exposing about an inch of wire), then soldered the halo wires in (checked polarity and lights by first wrapping the wires and turning on my parking lights). After soldering the halo wires to the parking lights, I covered the connections in dielectric silicon grease, wrapped the the connections and exposed factory wires in electrical tape, put new wire loom over the wires and taped up the loom.
The 80mm halo fit very well around the projector shroud, but I did have to dremel cut a notch into the top of the removable housing to make it fit flush (sorry for no photos). I used four anchor points of fishing line to secure the halos (top and bottom, left and right side). I then drilled a hole in the top of the headlight housing to run the halo wire through. After securing the halos, we put some new Butyl rubber around the drilled holes and the perimeter of the lenses, baked the headlights to seal them up, and installed them back into the car.
Awesome post Robotsnakes! Do you have a link to the 80 mm rings that you bought? I am baking/clearing my headlights next week after Christmas (I've been planning this for over a year!) and am thinking that I really want to install angel eyes as well. Yours turned out great!
09-26-2016, 02:51 PM
