Sorta performance, sorta electrical. Has anybody installed a headlight harness on their 92-99? I'm looking for a way to bump up the light output without resorting to HID. One lens is new, the other is cleaned to ~95% of new clarity.

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2012 Chevrolet Cruze Eco - Current car

1999 Buick LeSabre Custom - Former car

Learn from the mistakes of others, that way when you mess up you can do so in new and interesting ways.

well if you just want to bump it up a bit, i seem to remember that you can modify a 9006 (high beam) to fit in the 9005 (low beam) spot.

Done so far:

9005 low beam. Impressive gain by itself.

Harness for those low beams. Ebay Harness Cheaper than I could have made one myself. Quality is fairly good for a cheap harness. I might upgrade the relay to a name-brand one and carry a spare in the glovebox.

Connected it at the battery and a body ground.

Result: WOW!!! Lots more light than just the 9005 bulb alone.

Doesn't seem to affect the car's wiring or high beam/DRL function at all. Flicked on the highs, response seems to be instant just as stock.

My fear is that with only the low beams being driven off the battery it will somehow mess up the lighting electricals with only the lows disconnected.

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2012 Chevrolet Cruze Eco - Current car

1999 Buick LeSabre Custom - Former car

Learn from the mistakes of others, that way when you mess up you can do so in new and interesting ways.

Still impressed with the results garnered. No ill effects seen yet, beyond marveling at how much more I can see at night.

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2012 Chevrolet Cruze Eco - Current car

1999 Buick LeSabre Custom - Former car

Learn from the mistakes of others, that way when you mess up you can do so in new and interesting ways.

I don't understand what you're doing here? just replaced the harness with a heavier one?

Sorry I didn't respond to this until now.

What that relay harness did was make a separate circuit for the low beams. This allows them to get more power since the bulbs are the only thing on the circuit. It's like putting your stove or refrigerator on a separate circuit so they don't over-load the rest of the house's wiring.

The 9005's are 65 watts as compared to 50-55 watts for the 9006 bulbs. They made my headlight switch get kinda toasty without the harness. With the harness installed, the headlight switch becomes like the ignition switch where it just trips a solenoid to let the starter motor draw power directly from the battery, a lot more power than the ignition switch itself could handle. Or in this case, having the headlights draw power from the battery via the relay in the harness and not tax the headlight switch in the cabin with a higher current draw than what it is supposed to sustain.

To answer your question: I augmented the stock wiring with separate, heavier-duty wiring. No cutting or replacing of wiring involved.

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2012 Chevrolet Cruze Eco - Current car

1999 Buick LeSabre Custom - Former car

Learn from the mistakes of others, that way when you mess up you can do so in new and interesting ways.

Do you have any pics of this harness install?

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i would love to see this as well

bump? does this add another switch you must use for headlights?

My b about not replying sooner. Rarely check this area.

Bonnevillian, this integrates directly with your headlights. There's no additional switch needed. You plug your stock headlight connector into the plug on the harness, then connect the harness to your headlights.

The harness is wired to the positive terminal on the battery and to a grounding point (fender bolt in my case). There's a relay that gets powered on when you switch on the headlights. Once the relay is powered on, it completes the circuit between the battery, the headlights, and the body ground. Drawing power for the headlights directly from the battery through a relay and larger wire than stock means less power is lost getting from the battery to the lights. Instead of getting routed all around the car before reaching your headlights, power goes on a more direct path to the lights.

Headlight power before harness: Battery>wiring>headlight switch>more wiring> headlights
After harness: Battery>wiring>headlights.

Another benefit is a much cooler headlight switch. It's acting as a switch with the relay harness, not as a power source like it is in the stock setup.

If you want a much better explanation than this, check out Daniel Stern Lighting. Lots of good information on his site. And excellent customer service.

The beauty of only using a single relay is that there's less wiring, and you do not have to disable or alter the high beams in any way. Keeping the stock DRL's was an objective, and this allowed me to have both high-powered low beams and keep the stock DRL's.

Here are some pretty poor pictures of the installation.





The first is the relay harness itself, and the second is the harness installed, hooked up to both headlights, the battery, and the body ground. The wire to the driver's side headlight is routed under the radiator mount, in between the radiator and A/C. You can see in the first picture where you plug in the stock headlight plug.

The only downside is that if your battery is marginal, this may well cause it to fail with the additional load. I'm pretty sure it caused the battery you see in the photos to fail at 10+ years in the car (OEM battery).

The upside is much brighter lights, especially with the 9005 bulb mod. They're almost as bright as the high beams.

This is long and rambling, but I ought to have covered everything. If you have more questions, ask and I will answer!

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2012 Chevrolet Cruze Eco - Current car

1999 Buick LeSabre Custom - Former car

Learn from the mistakes of others, that way when you mess up you can do so in new and interesting ways.