H4 wiring harness upgrade

[Chris]

I have posted before about the ARB M002/4 wiring harness upgrades. This is a plug and play harness that uses the signal to your bulb to trigger relays and take a feed directly from the battery post via HD wiring to your bulb. I tried a quick experiment with a flying lead from the battery to the bulb and was surprised by the difference. The stock wiring is puny and if you go stuffing extra wattage lamps in there you may end up frying the spider silk wiring as well as the bulb connector as I have done before. OK, but the drawback on the very nice ARB one is the price. £103 in the UK.

I was idly googling this afternoon and came across this. Wowser!

http://www.eautoworks.com/Putco-H4--900 ... D7540.aspx

Duly ordered for silly cheapness. I shall give it a go and report back. It only does the outer lights which are dip and main and not the aux mains for the inner lamps. Well not yet it doesn't The ARB has three relays, so it must be more cleverer that this one. But for $37 it's got be worth a spin. I was looking on a Jeep forum from the search results and everyone said that this was a good piece of kit and easily as good as the ARB but a fraction of the cost.


Rock on

Chris

 

[Lorin]

I'll be very interested to hear the results of this

 

[AndyCook]

i got a 4crawler H4 harness kit, which looks the same, for my previous toyota 4x4 - a 4runner,
it made a vast difference to lights

but they are out of stock at the moment
http://www.4crawler.com/4x4/CheapTricks ... ghts.shtml

it was similar price to your eautoworks kit

 

[adrianr]

GREAT FIND CHRIS

(sorry excited..) ordered mine too. for that money and a few quid to wire in the mains it's a steal, even if it needs a wee tweak.

 

[Chris]

Well for those of you who missed this one, mine arrived today (well I ordered 2 actually) slightly slower delivery than Adrian, who has fitted his already. I really cannot complain at all. Quality seems excellent, connections all very tidy, nice cable sheath over the individual wires which are super thick. Will get it whacked on soon as. How the ARB one is over £100, I can't say.

Can't see why there would be a problem once fitted so at present it's a huge thumbs up.

Might even fit an Audi


Chris

 

[Andrew Prince]

What did they come to with shipping and VAT/tax approx, Chris?

This looks like a sensible mod, given the puny wiring and frequency that standard bulbs seem to go, which I suspect is related to crappy wiring.

 

[Chris]

2 harnesses, plus shipping came to $100 bucks exackerly. No hit at UK customs. So what's that - £80 quid for a pair?

I can feel a group buy coming on I got 2 so I can mod one to do the other lights.

Chris

 

[Andrew Prince]

2 harnesses, plus shipping came to $100 bucks exackerly. No hit at UK customs. So what's that - £80 quid for a pair?

Thanks, Chris! Probably more like £65-70 at the current exchange rate! Even better
Waiting to hear how the fitting goes next

 

[Chris]

Well, it's only a case of unplug your lights, plug these in and connect the red wire to the battery and black wire to earth. What's to go wrong? Adrian has his fitted and said that this was all he did. It's that simple.


Chris

 

[adrianr]

It was simple. i had bonnet shut and clean hands inside of 40 mins, and thats with me faffing about choosing where to cable tie things to keep it neat and tidy.

I'm going to wire in the main beams off the same harness i think. cables are FAT. and they only have a few inches to run.

big difference to low beam, I'm running the 90/110 w bulbs in any case so yeps. we have bright lights now.

 

[Andrew Prince]

What did you do with the original wiring? Bin it or leave in place in case you want to reverse the mod?

Cheers,

 

[adrianr]

You don't touch it

new harness has 2 relays and 2 new leads for the lights

you plug in the drivers side socket you pulled off the headlamp and plug it into the socket on the new harness and thats it.

to remove would take maybe 5 minutes.

its a really well thought out set up.

 

[Brett]

Does anyone know if the ARB M002/4 wiring harness does the inner H1 lamps as well as the outer H4's?

 

[Chris]

Yes. You need both. The 002 does the main headlight with the double filament lamp and somehow the 004 fires up the single lamps in the inner lenses. But at a heck of a price. I don't think that you really need the 004 if you do the 002. I bought two of the Yank ones, thinking that I would make my own 004 harness by slaving off the other spare headlight connector and changing the 3 spade terminal to something to fit the single lamps. Either way, it's half the price at least of the ARB set up.

Chris

 

[Matt Wright]

Tidy work, glad it worked out as planned

 

[Brett]

Cheers Chris

 

[chadr]

Is this a worthwhile upgrade on the 90?

The stock lights aren't bad, especially with brighter bulbs from Phillips/Osram et al....do you think this wiring upgrade would make a noticeable improvement on the Colorado?

 

[Gary Stockton]

I think that it'll help on all the cruisers - the stock headlight loom is a bit too flimsy I reckon. Watching this with interest and wondering whether I shouldn't just make up my own loom with high-quality silicone cable ...

 

[prav]

Just wondering if just changing the bulbs to the phillips /osram bulbs or the brighter blue type which i think are 80/100w will still fry to wiring ,or just let it be until this new loom has been tested. Because my LC100 lights just the normal main beam is poor in the dark.....

 

[chadr]

The brighter lights from Osram/Phillips etc are still 55w/standard - something to do with better filament technology.......