Wire Light Bar To High Beams

Hey,
Looking for ideas on how to wire in my light bar. I would like to have it on a switch so that it can be on or off. But when the switch is on, then it would activate on and off with high beams.
So light bar comes on and off with brights, but also has a switch to keep off always.
Surely this has been done before….

 

Suggest doing lots of reading around the Lighting subforum. Someone can probably answer better than I can.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/forums/lighting.60/

There's probably more than one way to skin the cat, but it depends on how much power your light bar takes. Making the assumption that the high beam circuit itself doesn't provide enough to power it, and making an assumption that you would be using a switch that isn't rated to carry much direct amperage it would go something like:

Tap into high beam circuit as the trigger for a relay. Let's call that R1 for relay 1. That relay will control when your lightbar will or won't get power.

Second circuit would be your switch control for the lightbar being on/off, and you'll likely need a 2nd relay for that (again, assumptions on how much power the light bar takes so do your own research/decision making there)

 

I did this with mine, with an additional ability to turn them on anytime.

wi_taco is right, just feed the switch from the high beam circuit. Have it turn on a relay.

I had to use some diodes to make mine work since I had multiple seperate lights that I wanted to have independent control over in addition to the "high beam enable" switch which turn on everything. (I need to update my build thread with what I did)

 

Yeah curious how you also made it turn on independently

 

I have one switch which is fed by the high beam circuit labeled "high beam enable" which turns on the two relays which power the light bar and fog lights. I also have two switches for each fog light and light bar. I placed a diode between the outputs of the "high beam enable" to each of the relays for the lights. That way the outputs wont backfeed.

Here are some photos: https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/has-anybody-used-switches-from-otrattw.822298/#post-29504271

Notice in the photos for the green and white wires. there is a section covered with heat shrink. The diode the round thing just after the red disconnect, which combines into one wire. Everything feeds a relay to turn on the lights. It took me a few weeks to figure out since I dont do this sort of thing regularly. I'm probably not describing it well.