High beam electrical problem

I'll start from the beginning.

I started with wiring an on/off/on DPDT switch to my aux. driving lights. I had them wired in a fashion where the left "on" would turn them on, and the right "on" would turn them on ONLY when I switched on my high beams. I had originally tapped into the high beam wire at the drivers side plug. All was working fabulously, until I retro'ed HID's. After I installed them, I lost the "on with high beam" capability. I chalked this up to the need for an error canceler to be installed on the PS, as I had also lost my high beam indicator on the dash (not uncommon). Today, I installed the canceler in the passenger side plug and gave it a whirl. High beam indicator is now back, but still no aux driving lights with high beam. I break out my meter and this is what I find. I now have 7.4v coming from the high beam circuit. I have completly isolated it to verify that there are zero "non factory" loads on the circuit. I've checked both the PS, and DS. Both are reading the same 7.4v. The 7.4v will still operate the high beam shutter on my HID's but I'd like to know why I'm only getting 7v's instead of 12+v. Any ideas?

Edit: I just checked the voltage of the high beam circuit without the error canceler. It measured 1.1v to the high beam circuit with the HID's plugged in on the DS and nothing on the PS. I'm thinking it may be the canceler at this point. Who knows what size resistors are in it and that could really be contributing to the voltage drop.

 

Bumping this REALLY old thread. Taco, did you ever figure this out? I am currently dealing with something similar while trying to control auxiliary lights via the brights.

 

It would probably be best to use a relay triggered by the high beam -12v signal. The reason your having a problem is that our pickups headlights are turned on by grounding. The headlight switch just completes the ground to lights. It does not supply +12. I'm assuming your without DRL.

 

Mechanicjon, What Ive found is for what ever reason with a Bi-xeon HID installs the #8 R-W you are referring to no longer sees 12v. Like it normally would with stock head lights. What I found is with a functioning error canceller plugged in, then the #17 R-G indicator wire sees sufficient voltage to illuminate the dash light and can be used to trigger a aux light relay.

But thats kind of a round-a-bout way of making it work and if the cheap chinese error canceller fails then you lose your aux lights too.

 

This is how I'd do it.

 

Yes I did end up figuring it out... I wired them exactly as see below using a relay. I also had a canceler plugged in on the passenger side for the dash light high beam illuminator to function properly.