At some point I'm going to add some driving lights to this truck as the stock brights are a little lame. I often drive a rural 2 lane road to the cabin with more deer and elk on the road than people. Question is will adding two 100 watt lights tax the stock elec. system too much? I want to make sure that the lights are bright enough to make the project worth it. Thanks

 

What type of lights are looking at...? Ones like the Hella round offroad lights? If so you'll be fine as long as you run a relay (which most of those kits have w/ them).

Or you can just go w/ HID's
low beams w/ fogs

IMAG0528 by Mikeyyy816, on Flickr


IMAG0505 by Mikeyyy816, on Flickr

 

You can put HIDs in your Hella driving lamps, only 35watts each and 3 times the light output.

Mike

 

What I would do is pull your power right from your battery, with an inline fuse. Then to control it I would just do a simple relay setup that is attached to your high beams. That way you can keep your lows at the right height so you don't blind people. But when your high beams come on, your big 100Ws will too. You can stick those strait out of course. What I would do tho is go with some 300W hellas tho, cause your already pulling the power from the batt.
Your other option is, instead of controlling those lamps with the high beams is just to wire in a small switch under the dash. To me the high beams are less of a hassle. Its pretty easy to do, if you want to do it this way and don't know how just PM me.

HIDS are good mikey, but a set of 300W hellas are never going to compare. I was going to go the hella route, but when I looked at mounting behind that grill it was going to be, well not soo fun. So I would either need a bull bar or overhead to mount them and I didn't want that.

 

I was looking at Hella or KC round type 100 w. And yes I plan on going directly to battery, using a relay of course, and I want a seperate in cab switch. I do not want them to come on automatically with brights. My concern was whether ot not alternator could handle that much.

 

alternator should be fine. people run subwoofers, and every type of aftermarket light all at once. your only using them for brief periods so you should be alright.


btw, the stock high beam bulbs are trash. atleast replace them with silverstars

 

I run a pair of 130 watt lights, and a winch, and cab lights, and an e-fan and the stock alternator is fine.

Just remember to run your lights off of it's own relay. If you don't want a separate switch, fine, but only use an existing switch to trip the relay for the aux. lights...