lights! woo
 

Had 55w incandescent bulbs in my auxs. Well yesterday I decided to splurge and go the white xenon route..again 55w....well they worked for 2 nights but tonight it blew the fuse (its run off the factory fog lamp lines fuses and relays and all).

fuse came 20amp stock and i bumped it up to 25amp for the lights. its worked for months on the old lamps but the new one blew 3 tonight. is it safe to bump up to 30amp? dont wanna fry the line or worse..my truck. nothing is shorting out to my knowledge. and ive looked at all the connections and im good to go. so whats the deal?

Too much current draw heating the wire. Try using a relay instead of just increasing the fuse. That's the only thing I'd recommend to keep you from frying the truck.

its on a stock ford relay. I cut the pig tails off the fog lights and splice and butt connected the new lights to the fog relay/fuse/and switch. so im confused as whats wrong now?

Yeah that's what I'm figuring. Most people think they can just remove the stock ones and put in something different. The stock wiring cant handle the increased draw. The wires only have to be heated up a few times before they melt or short out. The fuse keeps blowing because its sensing it. To fix it you would either need to replace the wiring from the stock relay all the way to the lights. Or put in a relay at the lights them selves that gets you power direct from a larger gauge wire that you run yourself. If you don't change out to larger size wire your just going to keep burning fuses and start melting wire until you burn up most likely the truck.

You should run them separately... the stock fog wiring is very light as it was only designed for 35W fog bulbs.

ah thats it, i didnt know what wattage the stock fogs were. They got ripped off the second week I owned the truck and just assumed they were just as strong as you 45w/65w headlights. So I though 55w was perfect. now I know.

plan is run a direct hot wire from the positive terminal of battery with in line fuse to stock fog switch in radio bezel, then take it out to the lights with a relay. Ill bump the gauge up a little as well. I just find it strange that my current set up lasted roughly a year and now it cuts out. its popping fuses right when i plug them in which would mean its shorting out.. i may try to find the short and see if that dont fix it first

I got away with running a pair of 55w KC's on the stock circuit for a little over a month, l only turned them on a few dozen times so it was probably only a little over an hour or two of run time. I noticed the wires were getting hot so I decided to put a relay in at the lights. I used the factory switch and wiring and the existing relay - which is just there because I didn't take it out - to run the new relay then I ran a power line off of a terminal block I installed previously that is fed off the battery. I could have run the wiring all the way to the switch but mine wasn't bad so I just took the shorter route... This way I can take mine off and put the stock ones back in place if I ever get rid of the truck... Or so the plan goes...

+1 on running a new relay, fuse & wiring for the new lights.

The OEM wiring is only like 18ga or something tiny... I'd suggest 14ga for up to 100w lights... maybe even 12ga if the mood hit me.

You'll want to use a 30/40 amp relay and probably a 15a to 20a fuse, whatever came with the lights... I don't recommend increasing the fuse, that's asking for a fire :raincloud

If you're looking to use the OEM fog switch to run the lights, I make a conversion kit for oem switches to control aftermarket or oem lights that bypasses all the oem wiring.

buggman = boss. thanks homie. ill pass on your kit but ill deff take your info.