Tweet
Purchased a pair of Hella Rallye 4000 lights and a Hella wiring harness as I got a really great deal on the lights. My local auto store was closing down and lost of items were close to half price. Happy with my purchase I got home and started the installation the next day. I had to cut the harness as suggested if headlight plugs were different, no problem. Mounted the lights, put on the 20A glass bulb fuse link, heat shrinked all the connectors and turned it on. The spread beam worked but not the spot beam. Hmmm, lets see if the switch works, pop, blew a fuse. Bugger. Right check the wiring again, hmmm seems I stuffed up the wires to the switch and changed mixed it up with the spot beam. No worries, swap the wires around (with the Hella wiring harness, there are 4 paired wires so a power and ground wires in black tubing all looking the same so I managed to stuff it up). Now lights work. Hooray, wait for dark and go for a drive to adjust. Found a nice stretch of unlit road about 2 mins from home, with the lights on a mate a I started adjusting. Did the spread beam first no worries and then did the spot beam. I noticed it was arcing when we adjusted it, sparks were coming out around the bottom near the bull bar. Hmmm, checked the wires at the back, none bare so we thought that was strange. Got back in the Prado and turned them off as car coming and then back on and away we went home. Wasn't really impressed as they didn't appear to do much. Got home and decided to adjust again, turned the high beam on and nothing. Crap what's up now...blown fuse, fudge, only have 15A left. Did a bit of looking on the next for any problems and there was a post on another forum that reckon the bloke had a short in the wires in the back of his light. Ok, time to call it a night and attack again tomorrow. Make this story a little bit shorter, I found out that there was a short in the light as the mount was getting power, causing the fuse to blow. Traced this back to poor light design. Two screws either side of bottom to adjust lights. These screwed into a plate which gets power due to light design. The screws are not insulated and any adjustment away from the factor setting, due to only a 1mm gap if that around the screw will cause the mounting bracket to get power which is transferred down to the bolt that attached to the bull bar (took an hour or two to work this out). No worries I ring the store telling them the light is faulty. Sorry mate, if you didn't get it installed by an electrician no warranty. You have to be kidding me the light is stuffed and you blame me....Crap...aha I know a sparky, told him the dealings, wrote me up a letter and back to the store I went. Got myself a new spot beam. Now I decided to try the light before connecting every thing up. Held it in my hand, turned the system on and it worked hooray. Put it on the bull bar, it worked hooray, mounted it and then adjust it, bang went the new fuse 20A mini fuse (new fused link). Stuff it, back inside and tackle tomorrow. Day 3 now of simple installation and no I'm not an electrician but do pride myself on know a little about a lot, and I had to rebuild a wiring harness for my motor bike, another story. So now I have the same problem with a brand new light, talk about a faulty batch. I noticed these lights have some coating on them that doesn't conduct electricity, I reckon they missed a few spots. The only way I could think of to solve the problem apart from binning the lights was to put some heat shrink over the screws where they touch the casing and mounting bracket. Did this and it worked, problem solved, lights adjusted and no more blown fuses. I was quite happy that I found the problem as was able to solve it. I'm going to write to Hella Australia and tell them about their faulty lights, maybe I'll get a keyring out of it (on second thoughts, is light actually faulty or is this how they are supposed to be?). Anyway, thought I'd just share me experience with you all, maybe some of you out there would have found the problem a bit earlier. This really did drive me mad, as brand new lights and the appropriate wiring harness when connected correctly should work! 
Comment