Your unique mod on the 1st Gens

Cool. Do you have a picture of the interior? That would help me choose a tan that works.

 

I’ll grab a good one tonight

 

Sweet, my favorite gen MR2 at that, SW20! Man, the lawns in your neighborhood are looking pretty sharp too lol

 

TL;DR: I wired my auxiliary lights with three settings.

• Switch position 1: Arms all the aux lights to turn ON/OFF in sync with high beams stalk switch.
• Switch position 2: Aux Lights Off.
• Switch Position 3: Aux Lights On, even without key.

More Detailed
I'm sure this has been done. However I think it's a bit unique. I, like many fellow modders, have auxiliary lights on the front of my truck and it's for "off-road use only"... of course. However on those really dark lonely roads, it's nice to be able to switch on the lights and have the best approximation of daylight ahead of me. At first, I had the lights on a separate switch and would generally turn on my high beams and the auxiliary lights, two switches. The high beams switch on the stalk is very easy to turn on and off without looking or leaving the steering wheel, whereas the auxiliary light switch is a bit out of the way. If someone unexpectedly comes on the road or around the turn, I always scrambled to turn off the auxiliary lights in a timely manner and not fumble around in the pitch black to turn off the brights and the aux lights. If only there was a way to sync the brights with the auxiliary lights.

The headlight bulbs are unique in some ways. The bulb has three pins and two filaments, power is fed to one pin and depending on which of the remaining two pins is connected to ground controls which filament is lit producing high and low beams. The light stalk switch controls the ground to bulbs thereby controlling the high and low beam. You'd call this type of circuit control a switched ground. Its a little tricky to conceptualize if you've never thought about it like that (see diagram below). The uniqueness of the bulb and how it's controlled required some a little bit more circuity to control. I used two relays. One is to separate the high beam control circuit and the other controls the relay. Simply hooking the ground of the aux lights to the ground of the high beams allows current to flow thru the filament of the bulb. The second relay is what switches the auxiliary lights on and off depending of the switch position. Speaking of the switch, the switch used is a SPDT ON/OFF/ON switch and also uses the switched ground principle. It is a Contura XIV type switch. I wired the bottom illumination to the dash board dimmer circuit so it dims and turns on with the dash board lights. The top illumination turns on when the lights are on. I also added a cluster mounted indicator light to the circuit. This is more for my idiot self, who can and has left the aux lights on in the bright sun after bumping the switch and didn't realize until later. At least a light on the dash will tell me I'm being an idiot.

I'll leave it at that. It is hard to demonstrate without a video with pics alone. The installation i did not document in great detail. However, Feel free to ask questions though.

 

I get the gist but would love a video. I am dealing with similar issues where I get frustrated needing to turn multiple switches off if a car is coming.

 

I can attempt to clarify if you can be more specific on what you'd want to see in a video? The diagram above is more of the concept of what is happening electrically and not really how the circuit is built out in real life. Are you looking to see it all in operation? Or looking for a more detail diagram that represents the actual wire routing?

 

I just feel a demo video would really properly show what you accomplished, and might have more impact? But no I can follow the diagrams you have to see what you did. Also is this only controlling one set of aux lights? For some reason I assumed it was covering multiple sets of lights.

 

You're right, the post doesn't have the wow factor without a demo haha.

To answer your question: In my particular case, yes, it only controls one set of lights. However, you can tack on as many lights as you want (assuming you don't overload wires, relays, fuses, etc) to the switched side of the "aux lights control relay" in the diagram. I'm guessing you already have lights installed. There are a couple of ways you could go about it and I'm not sure how you wired your lights up, so I'll explain just the general concept:

Splice in the power from the switched side of the "aux lights control relay" AFTER your existing switches that control your lights. Essentially the "aux lights control relay" would provide power to all the lights you'd want to sync up, whether that's providing power to the relay coils or feeding it directly to your lights. In that case, you wouldn't need the fancy SPDT switch, you'd just need a "sync" switch. Just be careful because I don't know what type of power draw you have on all the lights you intend to sync up, on relay might not be enough to power all. Hope that made sense. If not I can markup any diagram you may have.

 

How much better are these than stock seats? Do they recline and slide? How hard was it to mount in the truck? I’m debating between these and integra seats. TIA

 

Made this switch panel for the single din cubby. Now I just have to figure out the RF interference from the LED lights messing up my radio experience.

 

Personally I like them more than the stock seats a lot. They hold me better, and have more adjustments like up/down, and lower lumbar adjustability. They fully slide and recline just like the stock ones did since they are designed for a coupe. Installation really was cutting my old feet off the stockers and welding them to the rsx rails. They do sit a bit higher than the stock seats though and since I am 6'2" I have the height adjusted all the way down. I won't hit the ceiling but sometimes my mirror is in the way now. It is nice seeing over the hood better on tight trails though.

 

Thanks so much for the input! RSX seats are looking good

 

That's funny. I also did the RSX seats and am 6'2" so my experience has been the same. I really wish there was a way to make them lower without having to hack up the bases.

 

I'm about to buy some 2000 Honda prelude seats today for the truck, hoping it won't be too bad of an install

 

If you own an angle grinder and a welder, it will be pretty straightforward.

 

This ever happen?

 

No. . High ambition, low motivation.

 

Hey, let me show you the laundry list of mods and parts pile i have for my old lincoln. no judgement here!

 

Same Boat,
Need to replace the head, but pulling the head I wanna pull the bumper, if I pull the bumper I remove the winch to put into my ranger, but I then don't to go without the winch in the taco so I had to get another, Then replacing the front coils need new coilovers and tophats. and the list goes on just for this truck alone.