Help with hooking up lighting please

[fallguy]

I bought a DV8 bumper and the Elite 13" light bar to go with it.

https://dv8offroad.com/collections/...oducts/6th-gen-bronco-factory-bumper-bull-bar
https://dv8offroad.com/products/13-inch-led-light-bar-be13ew45w?_pos=1&_sid=13ef6c078&_ss=r

There are zero instructions on how to hook it up. It is not overly hard using their on/off switch. I have it all hooked up and working fine using their on/off switch. I want to use my AUX though. Looking at the wires going to their switch, there are three wires. I tried to slide in the purple AUX wire that is located in front into each of the three pins to see if I could get lucky and it would come on, it did not. It does not come with an easy connector like the Morimoto harness does where you unplug their on/off and attach the one for AUX. Im sure it is an easy fix, just dunno what to do.

How do I change the switch to my AUX? Below are the pics of their three wire hookup, and showing that it works. Does the purple just not have enough juice to run the light?

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[fallguy]

Is one of those three wires a power, and an other ground, and wont work unless both are hooked up?

 

[Ground_zero298]

From the light pics it’s a 2 wire setup. Harness you have shows 3. I’ve never seen a dv8 harness before in person. Can you post a pic of where the Hermes’s connects to the 2 wire please?

My dv8 bar had a 2 wire out of it.

 

[fallguy]

From the light pics it’s a 2 wire setup. Harness you have shows 3. I’ve never seen a dv8 harness before in person. Can you post a pic of where the Hermes’s connects to the 2 wire please?

My dv8 bar had a 2 wire out of it.

I did have two wires from the light like you said, one red and one black. That was on a connector that could be taken off. I put a clip on them, and hooked into the clips that came on the harness for power. It's all tucked away, but seems to be the same as yours. I linked to it in first post.

 

[Ground_zero298]

Okay. I’m gonna guess you have a ground and 2 powers split for the switch. As in power goes in one side and then returns out of the switch.

The power going in wire would go to a uplifter end.

 

[fallguy]

Here is my connectors for the power. The harness had connectors already on it. I added connectors to the red and black wire coming from the light and connected them. Connected power to the battery, attached the relay to the side wall, and hooked up the on/off connector. Works fine using it.



It is literally hooked up the same as this setup, except they have an option to remove the on/off switch, and attach a single wire that they hook up to the AUX. None of my wires are red, which is the power wire out of the three going to the switch?

 

[Theherofails]

Looks like that's a generic harness for many different lights. When I look at the photos of your light itself, it has a red and black (positive and ground).

Check the connector going to the harness.. My guess is white attaches to red, black to black and the third wire is for models with a backlight.

If the wires coming off the light are indeed black/red, you just need to attach black to any ground point and red goes to your upfitter wire.

Don't worry about the third wire.

That's it.

That light is rated for 3Amps, so you can use any of the upfitters. I would put it on 3-6 and save 1-2 for higher amperage devices down the road.

 

[fallguy]

Looks like that's a generic harness for many different lights. When I look at the photos of your light itself, it has a red and black (positive and ground).

Check the connector going to the harness.. My guess is white attaches to red, black to black and the third wire is for models with a backlight.

If the wires coming off the light are indeed black/red, you just need to attach black to any ground point and red goes to your upfitter wire.

Don't worry about the third wire.

That's it.

That light is rated for 3Amps, so you can use any of the upfitters. I would put it on 3-6 and save 1-2 for higher amperage devices down the road.

Thank you, I will check tomorrow. About to go to work and put everything back up. So the red wire coming out on the other end of the relay and fuse goes to AUX, and the black goes to ground? Those are what I connected to the battery. The light bar itself does only have a red and black wire.

So no need for the wire to the on/off switch at all? I took the connector off of it, has a white, blue and black wire. Stripped them and tried each on my AUX, #3. Did not work. Touching the blue and white wire turns it on however.

 

[Theherofails]

A relay allows you to switch on a high amp load like a large light bar by using a low amp switch. Typically it's used for safety so the end user isn't touching a switch that has a dangerous amount of power going through it in case of malfunction. It also helps keeps costs low if you're wiring high amperage devices as you need less thick gauge wire. Neither reasons are applicable here.

Your upfitter set up from Ford is already fused and running through relays.

It’s your harness so it’s up to you, but my advice is to cut the harness before it gets to the relay and just wire the red (which is probably white in the harness) to the upfitter and put a ring connector on the black and attach it to any bare metal by using an existing bolt somewhere. Make sure the metal where you attach the ground has a clear path to the frame. You'll know if it doesn't because your light won't work.

There is a purple wire that comes out right by the radiator. You could connect that purple wire to your upfitter of choice and then connect said purple wire directly to the light and then attach the ground near the bumper. In this photo, the wire in question is labeled as C.

This is all confusing as heck, I know. I'll give an example. Lets say you want your lightbar to Upfitter 1.


Light bar positive ---> Violet Gray by radiator ---> AUX1/Yellow wire near driver side firewall.
Light bar negative ---> any available ground point near the lightbar.


That's really all you have to do.

You don't need the rest of the harness at 3amps and just creates clutter/introduced more points of failure. Ignore the updated amp ratings from Ford, they're BS. You're never going to run the amperage they claim through 16g wires.

(1.5mm = 16AWG)

Just for reference:

The light bar you linked is advertised at 45w/3amps, which, if accurate, is low enough to be used on any upfitter switch.

 

[fallguy]

Thank you very much. I think I understand now. I misunderstood how it worked. I thought there had to be power ran to the battery and the AUX was like an on/off switch. But the AUX wires are powered and the attachment to the battery is not needed.

I will try it tomorrow once I get up. Thanks again, I will keep this for later endeavors as well.

 

[fallguy]

Edit, fixed! Went straight from the light, red and black wire, to the AUX 6 yellow, and grounded it up by the dash. Works great. Thanks to all!

 

[IDyeti]

Remove the relay from the equation, not needed here. From the lightbar, ground the black cable to the vehicle chasis (remove paint so there's bare metal). The red cable from the light bar will go to the purple wire behind the grill. From the purple wire's other end by the fuse box, connect that to your chosen aux switch wire.

 

[fallguy]

I got it, thanks! I will do that route whenever I get fog lights installed as they will be up front too.

Thanks again to everyone, thought I needed the relay. Misunderstood the entire point of the AUX switches. Thought accessories still needed power from the battery and the AUX was a simple on/off with relays. Should have done some more research before I tried to install them.

 

[Bradyrufenacht]

I have a question. I installed ditch lights and a DV* bumper with a 20" light bar. I hooked up the ditch lights to up fitter switch #2. I hooked up the 20" light bumper to the factory fog light switch. No relay, just the 2 wires hooked up to the factory plug. . When I turn on the fog light switch, the light bar comes on for about 2 seconds then switch off. Is this because I didn't wire in a relay? Thought I would ask here before scrapping the idea and hooking it to an upfitter switch. Thanks for any help.

 

[l88m22vette]

Quick bump - I'm looking at a pair of Hella 500s, so 55w, which means 4.6 amps each or 9.2 total. I've seen conflicting info an the Aux switch amps, this says 4-5 are 5 amps each but Bronco Nation has a different chart. I'd really like to use Aux 4-6 for lighting, and wanted to start with 6, can I do that?

https://thebronconation.com/how-to-use-the-auxiliary-switches-on-your-bronco/

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