New PIAA's! Down with Hippies!

[runnyrunnerton]

I just wired my new piaas up in my new ODL bumper, getting ready to start bragging on here and then I turn key.....dead battery, go grab the charger, plug it in, making a funny sound, nada from the starter, scanguage not logging into ecu....hmmmmm.....we better put more juice to it. 50 amp start. Loud jolting hollow life sucking depressent "CLICK!" from somewhere up front. Oh god what have I done?

So Piaas have a "switch power wire" used to hook into high beams only for all your hippie friendly off road use only areas, since i didnt have time to order my new switches yet, if figured, Id just wing it, but i dont want to nick a headlight line for 3 days of use so Ill just touch this switch power wire to hots until the lamps turn on. Turns out the hot was a ground. Basically i was grounding out the entire loop and shock testing whatever relays and fuses were in and around that area.

The entire piaa fiasco is unhooked as we speak, the battery is taking a charge the head unit and scanguage are all checking in and the motor just turned over. This was not the case earlier. I completely removed the piaa wiring harness and everything appears to be coming back together. Soooooo. WTF? can i make my own harness that doesnt suck at life? I cant get my head around why my piaa harness is so much more complicated than my do it yourself harnesses that i put together on my rhino? What was causing battery charger to fry itself and not start my motor? Overall......what the f?


Hippies who made a law that i couldnt run driving lamps when i need them must be stopped. So Gay

 

[TheDurk]

I just wired my new piaas up in my new ODL bumper, getting ready to start bragging on here and then I turn key.....dead battery, go grab the charger, plug it in, making a funny sound, nada from the starter, scanguage not logging into ecu....hmmmmm.....we better put more juice to it. 50 amp start. Loud jolting hollow life sucking depressent "CLICK!" from somewhere up front. Oh god what have I done?

So Piaas have a "switch power wire" used to hook into high beams only for all your hippie friendly off road use only areas, since i didnt have time to order my new switches yet, if figured, Id just wing it, but i dont want to nick a headlight line for 3 days of use so Ill just touch this switch power wire to hots until the lamps turn on. Turns out the hot was a ground. Basically i was grounding out the entire loop and shock testing whatever relays and fuses were in and around that area.

The entire piaa fiasco is unhooked as we speak, the battery is taking a charge the head unit and scanguage are all checking in and the motor just turned over. This was not the case earlier. I completely removed the piaa wiring harness and everything appears to be coming back together. Soooooo. WTF? can i make my own harness that doesnt suck at life? I cant get my head around why my piaa harness is so much more complicated than my do it yourself harnesses that i put together on my rhino? What was causing battery charger to fry itself and not start my motor? Overall......what the f?


Hippies who made a law that i couldnt run driving lamps when i need them must be stopped. So Gay

I think you need to think again about what you did. A switch power wire that needs a hot--if it is correctly wired elsewhere--would normally go through the switch to the relay coil and then to ground. If you ground the hot end, you just have a coil connected to ground at both ends. Absolutely NOTHING would happen. It's just a loop.

So chart out exactly what you did, because this should not have happened. I suspect somehow your switch power lead most have been connected to the relay 12V+ line--not easy to do. Or get some help...

 

[the great him]

i dont know what your doing but what ever you did is the problem... i have had idk how many sets of PIAA lights, and every single one of them have worked just fine... their wire harness is about the most simple harness to use and work with. you need to ground the black wire, and give power to the white wire... its that easy. nothing else needs to be done then you use their switch to turn on the lights when ever you feel like you want them on. is about as strait forward as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich...

 

[wmeredith]

Dude, the hippies are not the problem. It sounds like not reason the directions is the problem.

 

[8sm]

When you're up and running, post pic of your lights on the ODL bumper.

 

[Brilliant]

given the title, I was very disappointed reading this thread.

 

[runnyrunnerton]

Problem solved. Yanked the harness and rewired everything from scratch. I don't know what i did but i did it wrong the first time. Nothing else fried but the charger. I tapped by brake light line and the lights work. Down with hippies is making a terrible electrician like me believe i had to tap the high beams only to complete a loop and make the lights work. That is simply over engineering to keep some law happy. I adjusted this to make it work for me but what a PITA. Moral of the story, yank it all out and start over when in doubt. Ill get pictures of the light patterns tonight, but wow these 510s are bright!

 

[JWaldz]

Seeing how this post originated yesterday, you officially had the last T4R fail of the month... congrats :thumb3:

 

[farmerjon]

Problem solved. Yanked the harness and rewired everything from scratch. I don't know what i did but i did it wrong the first time. Nothing else fried but the charger. I tapped by brake light line and the lights work. Down with hippies is making a terrible electrician like me believe i had to tap the high beams only to complete a loop and make the lights work. That is simply over engineering to keep some law happy. I adjusted this to make it work for me but what a PITA. Moral of the story, yank it all out and start over when in doubt. Ill get pictures of the light patterns tonight, but wow these 510s are bright!

What is it with HIPPIE THIS and HIPPIE THAT? HIPPIE everything? :roadkill: lol makes me wonder if you are a secret HIPPIE?

haha, I'm just messing with ya. Congrats on getting the PIAA's to work, I have yet to attempt any wiring stuff like that. :bluejump:

 

[the great him]

Headlights are switched on the ground, not the power, that's your problem...

 

[techno]

I'm no hippy, but it's not them that make automotive lighting laws. It the 95% of normal motorists out there that lobby for those rules because they get blinded by knob-heads who don't dip their lights for on coming traffic, or the mega knob-heads who are too dumb to figure out simple wiring instructions for their driving lights and then don't shut them off for on coming traffic.
Your driving lights must be hooked up to the high beams to pass annual inspection in PA. It makes sense too. If you want more light, them the high beams are the first thing you should turn on.

 

[TheDurk]

Headlights are switched on the ground, not the power, that's your problem...

...depends if you have DRL's or not. Switched hots with DRL's (2000+ and all the Canucks) and switched grounds without. (He has a '97, so indeed switched grounds--just wanted clarity for others.) But, as I said, if he is expecting hot, and connects ground-to-ground, NOTHING will happen. It won't work, but it won't short. He FUBARED something else. To short like that, he left the relay coil OUT of the switch circuit. That has nothing to do with how the car is wired.

I had a Hella harness that was built wrong. They put the the wrong color leads in the wrong holes in the relay plug. I was running full current through the switch and the coil was connected hot-to-ground 24/7 and discharging my battery. Took me three years to notice since the lights worked and the battery never died as I drove it every day. Finally the switch failed.

This is also a possibility, even for PIAA.

 

[fish0281]

I'm no hippy, but it's not them that make automotive lighting laws. It the 95% of normal motorists out there that lobby for those rules because they get blinded by knob-heads who don't dip their lights for on coming traffic, or the mega knob-heads who are too dumb to figure out simple wiring instructions for their driving lights and then don't shut them off for on coming traffic.
Your driving lights must be hooked up to the high beams to pass annual inspection in PA. It makes sense too. If you want more light, them the high beams are the first thing you should turn on.

Took the words right off of my keyboard. Electrical systems are not as intuitive as mechanical ones, but if you slow down and think it through, it's pretty brainless actually (ironic word choice, sorry).

I actually used the DRL wire (I had already cut it to disable the actual DRL) to signal the relay on my setup. Works great!