Adding relays

[JOHN]

First I must share my excitement. An elderly man buys the house across the street. I interduce myself and talk to him daily. After a couple weeks he tells me him and his wife will not move in for 4-6 months. it seems he has a farm to sell off first. OK… Then he askes if I have room for anther car in my Garage. I laughted. He tells me he has an MG he dont really want to sell at auction. It is a fine peice. shiny paint clean chrome, a couple light issues. I accepted!!!!!! It is a chevette power train on a custom frame.

I am mechanicly inclined.  so here goes. The car has 4 or 5 toggle swithes in it i only know what 2 do. so I have been tracing wires. one thing I noticed was a lot of lenghty hot wires running from fuse box (left kick panel) to switch to lights or fuel pump ect… I want to re-wire and run relays to the heavy electrical items. any pointers?

[Steve Crites]

Welcome to the forum!

Lots of good info here on the site. As far a relays go, I had a problem with the main fuse blowing when I ran the headlights for a long time.  The problem was the same as what you’re describing, wires too long with too much voltage drop. I put relays up at the front, close to the lights and ran main power direct from my solenoid to power ’em up and put ground directly to the chassis close to the relay. Original headlight wire used for switching the relays on. No more fried fuses and as a benefit I now have full 14 volts at the dash.  Simple to do, well worth the time. There’s quite a few sites that detail this out,  just google headlight relay wiring.

Good luck and enjoy your new toy.
Ringo

[JOHN]

Great idea. I never considered using the starter solenoid. I was prepared to install and run a power distibution block, or install an acc. solenoid. Sometimes simple things are over looked.

[Author]

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