Brother Raccoons:
After years of dedicated procrastination, I screwed up and mounted a set of
headlight relays in my GTV6. I guess I got exhausted and couldn't prevent
myself from doing it any longer. Anyway, the results are just great.
I couldn't find a good space to mount the two relays in the engine
compartment. And so I decided to mount them in the space behind the
driver's side headlights. There's a fairly large volume there, that's
accessible with the two headlights removed. I mounted the relays on the
sheet-metal plate that forms the front of the inner fender. The other nice
thing about this location is that all of the headlight wiring runs through
this space. And so I was able to make all of my cuts and splices right
there. The only indication that the work has been done is two heavy wires
running from the main power terminal on the driver's side, inner fender,
forward to two inline fuse holders, and then disappearing with the rest of
the wiring through to the front cowl, next to the radiator.
The first owner of my car (I'm the second) replaced the original,
sealed-beam headlights with Cibie Z-Beams. They pull a total of 110 watts
on low-beam, and 320 watts on high. (The low beam lights have Philips
100/55 "rally" bulbs in them.) I have a feeling that's more power than the
originals used. The headlight switch used to get pretty warm with the low
beams on. It would get HOT with the highs on. The headlights are
noticeably brighter now, and the headlight switch is now only handling low
current. I spent about an hour or two going over the wiring diagrams to see
what I had to work with and how I would splice into the system, and then
about three hours doing the actual installation. Now I can see and I'm no
longer nervous every time I flip the lights on.
Rich Wagner
Montrose, CO, USA
'82 GTV6
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