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Before Christmas I was reading through yet another thread about headlight brightness, light switches melting etc. Thought I'd try the Boomslang harness out and sent off for one. Just got around to fitting it this afternoon. I'm no auto-electrician, so feel free to tell me where I've gone wrong so that others can learn from my mistakes. Thanks to @The Mad Hat Man for sending me some adhesive heat shrink
The harness comes with a short earth lead for each headlight unit, but rather than use those I thought I'd run a cable back to the battery. You need to run the live back to the battery or alternator anyway and the live wire isn't in conduit. So, I thought I'd buy some conduit and run both cables back to the battery in that.
One of the sockets with an earth cable, which I cut the terminal off.
Pulled a new wire through the existing conduit.
Bared the wires, soldered them flat alongside each other overlapping about 12mm, then covered the joing with heat shrink and pulled the joint inside the conduit.
Then I cut the terminal off the other earth wire and fed that wire back down the conduit cutting a little hole for it to come out next to where I had threaded the new earth wire in for the other headlight.
Above you can see I cut a section of insulation out of my new, continuous earth wire which already went through one section of conduit and was now.connected to the original earth wire. I soldered the second earth wire in to that gap and then put heat shrink on it.
I then cut the fuse and terminal off the end of the live wire and extended it so that it was 2.5m long from the joint in the picture above.
Then I slid the new earth cable and the original live cable down some new conduit.
Then I taped it all up.
This is the modified and fully conduited (is that a word) harness ready to go it the vehicle.
From the drivers side headlight I ran the harness over the fan cowl.
Under the radiator hose as you can see in pic above. Then behind the power steering reservoir.
The the heading for the battery box I went behind the washer bottle to keep it away from hot turbo area.
Down to the chassis rail.
And in to the battery box through the earth grommet and it had a gap
I'd bought some new terminals so I could bolt it to the battery terminal. So, soldered that on.
Bit of heat shrink.
Created a lap joint, as with all others, to the end of the live wire (which was blue by the way) and put heat shrink on it.
I then pulled the conduit through to cover that joint. (I'd puckered the conduit back a bit, so I could create the joint and then pull the conduit back to cover it)
Cleaned the battery terminal with brake cleaner, filed them shiny and then cleaned them again.
Bolted the cables in place.
Before and after pictures. However, I stupidly took the first picture, then fitted the harness, then too the second picture. So, there is a time delay between them and the light was just beginning to fade.
I should have fitted the harness without swapping the bulb connectors. Then take a before picture, swap to the new connectors and take the second. Anyway, for waht it's worth here are the before and after pictures.
The acid test will be the Mrs as she's like the computer, can see in 16 million colours and can tell the difference between all of them. She'll know if they're brighter or not.
The harness comes with a short earth lead for each headlight unit, but rather than use those I thought I'd run a cable back to the battery. You need to run the live back to the battery or alternator anyway and the live wire isn't in conduit. So, I thought I'd buy some conduit and run both cables back to the battery in that.
One of the sockets with an earth cable, which I cut the terminal off.
Pulled a new wire through the existing conduit.
Bared the wires, soldered them flat alongside each other overlapping about 12mm, then covered the joing with heat shrink and pulled the joint inside the conduit.
Then I cut the terminal off the other earth wire and fed that wire back down the conduit cutting a little hole for it to come out next to where I had threaded the new earth wire in for the other headlight.
Above you can see I cut a section of insulation out of my new, continuous earth wire which already went through one section of conduit and was now.connected to the original earth wire. I soldered the second earth wire in to that gap and then put heat shrink on it.
I then cut the fuse and terminal off the end of the live wire and extended it so that it was 2.5m long from the joint in the picture above.
Then I slid the new earth cable and the original live cable down some new conduit.
Then I taped it all up.
This is the modified and fully conduited (is that a word) harness ready to go it the vehicle.
From the drivers side headlight I ran the harness over the fan cowl.
Under the radiator hose as you can see in pic above. Then behind the power steering reservoir.
The the heading for the battery box I went behind the washer bottle to keep it away from hot turbo area.
Down to the chassis rail.
And in to the battery box through the earth grommet and it had a gap
I'd bought some new terminals so I could bolt it to the battery terminal. So, soldered that on.
Bit of heat shrink.
Created a lap joint, as with all others, to the end of the live wire (which was blue by the way) and put heat shrink on it.
I then pulled the conduit through to cover that joint. (I'd puckered the conduit back a bit, so I could create the joint and then pull the conduit back to cover it)
Cleaned the battery terminal with brake cleaner, filed them shiny and then cleaned them again.
Bolted the cables in place.
Before and after pictures. However, I stupidly took the first picture, then fitted the harness, then too the second picture. So, there is a time delay between them and the light was just beginning to fade.
I should have fitted the harness without swapping the bulb connectors. Then take a before picture, swap to the new connectors and take the second. Anyway, for waht it's worth here are the before and after pictures.
The acid test will be the Mrs as she's like the computer, can see in 16 million colours and can tell the difference between all of them. She'll know if they're brighter or not.