Quick Wiring Question

[Snackie]

Question about ancillary lighting here. I probably should have gotten the answer before getting this far along.

I have a 32" light bar behind my grille. It is wired thru an Opt7 harness with a relay and a 30amp fuse directly to the battery positive and a good ground. Everything was great. I added two ditch lights and tapped into the wiring harness after the relay and everything was great.

I just recently put a 40" light bar on my roof and tapped again into the harness after the relay and everything was working great until I had the lights on for a while and blew the 30amp inline fuse.

My question is.....can I just put a bigger fuse inline and continue to run everything off of one switch? or do I need to put the 40" on it's own harness and fuse?

I would prefer to keep all ancillary lighting on one switch because in my case I either need to light or don't......but not sure if there is anyway to run this may LED's on one relay, swaths and harness.

I'm not a big electricity guy so as simple an answer or help would be appreciated.

 

[llDemonll]

depends what gauge wire was used and what the capacity of the relay is.

 

[4Reak Show]

If you want a single switch, you're gonna be safest adding a second relay for that bigger bar, while still having the relay activated by the same switch.

Increasing the fuse isn't really the best idea. The fuse is there to burn out instead of the wires. If the wires (or relay) are too small then they become the fuse, of even worse, you get to do a field test with your fire extinguisher.

 

[Snackie]

Is there a simple way to do the math or is the fact that I burnt a 30 amp fuse my sign that I need to run another harness?

I have the harness and switch, it was just so easy to splice it in.

 

[Alexm963]

The current is just a sum of all the draws. All of your lights are in parallel(I assume). If they don’t have a current draw listed on them hopefully they have wattage. Current is wattage divided by voltage. Increasing the fuse is a bad idea. One light could be drawing too much but not enough to blow the fuse. That would let the wire or other components overheat. Separate circuits is best. Just daisy chain the switch output to the multiple relays.