1979-1993 & 94 Conv [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup
Well, the high beams on my 88 900T with 198,000 miles seemed weak and antiquated compared to newer saabs for late night empty road rural driving. It is reallllly easy to outdrive the lights! Admitedly, the car's light lenses are a little fogged, but another C900 with half the mileage only lights a tiny bit better. The lights on a 9-5 or 9-3 will spoil you when you have to get back into your C900.
I finally got around to installing driving lights. They are labeled off road use only and Maine statutes don't permit such lighting on the streets and highways. But I figure if I'm the ONLY car on the road, who's gonna mind? It's sort of like the tree falling in the woods and did it make a sound if nobody heard it question. I'm in a pretty rural place and can go for miles without seeing another car depending on the hour of the night.
I decided to mount my hella 500 driving lights above the bumper in front of the grille. I obtained L shaped pieces of metal drilled to fit the fog light bracket holes in the back of the bumper. The short part of the L sticks out under the grille. I drilled a hole in this end sticking out for bolting the light in.
The bolt at the bottom of the light has to be trimmed and ground down so that it clears the bumper cover. Then the light fastens with a lockwasher and nut. I ran the ground wires for the lights, then ran the positive up atop the left hand fender well near fuse box.
I had removed the cruise control, so that spot was available to attach relays. The relay that comes with the lights is a very common generic relay that is the same as the Saab foglight relay, and the same as <$10 relays available from electronics suppliers. I did a two relay configuration.
I have long ago busted off my foglights many a time, so I wasn't using the switch for the foglights. I thought this would be a great switch for the driving lights. Unfortunately I only want to use the driving lights in conjunction with high beams. If someone else shows up on the road, I want to be able to turn off my high beams and have the driving lights go out too. I read up in 371-58 and 371-59 in the Bentley manual. The way the foglight relay works is the coil is fed by both a high beam signal and a foglight signal. This is kinda tricky. When both high beams and foglight are selected, the same 12v goes to the coil on both sides, resulting in the coil not energizing and you not having foglights with high beam. When high beam is off, the voltage difference is 12v and the coil activates and the foglight work.
Knowing this, I removed the foglight relay and snipped the wires going to its coil underneath the fuse/relay block. If you weren't as destructive you could easy just plug spades in where the relay would have gone. The relay's #86 socket contact is a white wire (477) which is the signal from the foglight switch. I wanted to use this as the on/off for the driving lights. #85 contact on the foglight relay socket is the high beam signal and it uses a number 476 blue wire. I wanted this to control the driving lights too. (so they go on and off with high beams, when they are on according to the foglight dash switch)
I ran the 476 blue wire and the 477 white wire out of the fuse/relay box. I hooked the high beam (blue) wire to the first relay coil. The other side of the relay coil goes to ground. I ran the 477 white wire to one of the contacts of the first relay. The other contact goes to the second relay's coil.
The second relay's coil goes to ground as well as the high beam switched fog signal from the first relay. The contacts go between fused power and the driving lights.
I screwed both relays and their ground leads into the vertical piece above the wheel well with one metal screw. (like where the cruise control and other little vacuum things are bolted)
The results:
When I have the "foglight" switch on, and flip on the high beams, the driving lights light up too. I can see about 6x as far compared to normal high beams. The combination is about 4x brighter than high beams alone. Well worth the effort for me! This is an ideal setup for rural night driving. DO NOT EVER light up another car on the road as you will blind them for sure. I will now not outdrive my lights at night. I will also be able to see people and deer and other creatures much sooner and easier when driving home at night now, making the drive much safer.
posted by 69.39.1...
No Site Registration is Required to Post - Site Membership is optional (Member Features List), but helps to keep the site online
for all Saabers. If the site helps you, please consider helping the site by becoming a member.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
