tnt008

Anybody running 5 Hella 500FF's on the wire that comes with a box of 2 Hella's? Also running these five lights on one switch. Just melted the glass fuse connecter running from the battery to the relay. Why did it melt. Not big gauge wire? Too many lights on one switch? Too big of a fuse? ( Can't remember what size fuse was in there, but its the same as the other 3 fuses running hellas.

14Sport

It could have been a lot worse, count your blessings.

You have to match the wire, fuse, and switch to the draw of the lights. Anything undersized will be a problem, potentially burning down your Jeep.

You can convert watts to amps using this formula: Watts/Volts = Amps.

So 55W lamps draw approximately (55/12) 4.6 amps. If running 5 of them on the same circuit, that's a total of 23 (4.6 x 5) amps.

You also want approximately a 20 to 25% buffer in the circuit so you want to size for around 28.75 amps, so you should be good with using wiring, switches, and fuses rated for 30 amps. Make sure the fuse holder is also rated for 30A.

Here's a wiring chart that uses the amps plus the lengths of the circuit to size the wire. As you can see you will need a minimum of 8 gauge but most likely 6.

Amps and Wire Gauge - 12V Circuit

I suggest using a 30A relay so you don't have that much current running into the tub. A relay simply allows you to turn on high current circuit using a low current circuit. In other words, you use the 6 gauge wire between the battery and the lights, which also would include a fuse and relay. And then you could use a smaller gauge (18 or 20 or even smaller) between the relay and the switch and also the source for the switch (pin 86), and therefore the switch doesn't need to be rated at 30A.

This schematic is for 3 lights but you could add 2 more.