I have heard of peole wiring directly to battery without compromising the use of the normal switch. Does anyone know where you can find a kit to do this? Painless Wiring has one but it costs 113 dollars and that seems a little steep. Jacobs electronics had something similar but stopped making it do to lack of interest. They only wanted about half as much. Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

I've heard of this, But I'm not really convinced of a significant improvement. as an experiment, take a DVOM and check the voltage at the head light socket, and compare it with the voltage at the battery, i bet its less than .3 or .4 volts. If you really want more light, get the brighter bulbs. BTW, those kits are just relays. and you use the original wire for the the high and low beams as the signal, pretty simple to do your self and save 113 bucks.

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BigBunnell

98 F150 4X4 XLT flareside V6 5sp K&N Flowmaster and some other goodies

 

CHM,

I bought the Painless harness #30816 from Summit racing for $75.95. I just installed it yesterday and all I can say is WOW! It made such a difference in brightness. I have Hyperwhite bulbs that are the highest wattage you can get, 100/130 I think. They draw a lot more current than the stock bulbs. I got the harness because I was worried about melting the stock harness.

When I first installed the bulbs with the factory harness, they had a blueish color to them, like those cheap a$$ bulbs from PepBoys. Running them through this harness, they are pure white, and about 2x brighter.

Now I did find a problem with the harness but have a fix for it. They designed the harness and said it will work with 9004 and 9007 bulbs, because the light socket is the same. What they didn't realize is that the ground is different pins between these two bulbs. The 9004, ground is on the left looking at the headlight bulb pins with the flat side up. 9007, the ground is the center pin. The harness was designed for 9004, so they have the ground wire in the wrong position in the socket.

There are 3 wires in this socket, green(B+), tan(B+), and black(ground). What I did to fix this was switch the black wire with the tan wire in the actually socket the connects to the bulb. The terminals in the socket have a release pin that allows you to slide them out of the plastic socket housing. All I did was remove the black and the tan wires and switch them so that ground was now in the center. It doesn't really matter which wire you use for low/high beam, because the relays are exactly the same. All you need to do is match the correct wires to the factory harness.

So knowing that ground is the center pin on a 9007 bulb, we know that the center wire on the stock ford harness has to be ground also. That means that low/high beam wires are on the end pins. The Painless harness connects to the factory harness and uses that as the trigger for it's relays. You cut off the socket of the factory harness and connect it to the new harness.

Once you switch the wires like I described in the Painless harness, it will connect like this. Black wire to black wire of ford harness(center pin). Tan wire to drkgrn/org stripe of ford harness(left pin, low beam). Green wire to lightgrn/blk stripe of ford harness(right pin, high beam). Now when I say left and right pin, that is looking at the socket with the flat side up with the wires closest to you.

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Boss™

Ordered June 29th, 2000; took delivery Nov. 28th: 2001 F-150 Lariat, Oxford White/Silver Supercab 4x4, Styleside, 5.4L, 7700# payload, Class III Tow, 3.73LS, Skids, Leather Captains, 4W disc ABS, shift-on-fly, keyless.Engine build date: 10-25-00

Modifications:
"Protected by the Owner with his 2 friends, Smith & Wesson" sticker, Westin Chromed Stainless Nerf Bars, ARE LS II bed cover, Bedrug™, Gibson Swept Side Cat Back, K&N filter w/airbox mods, Hyper-White headlight & foglight bulbs, Pioneer DEH-8200R, Ventshades(not on back doors), Hood deflector, Superchip.

Future Modifications:
3" body lift with at least 33's, alarm/pager/auto start system, stereo system