Gen 4 Outback spotlight wiring

tmiller1079 · Post by **tmiller1079** » Fri Jun 25, 2010 9:35 am

Hi all - does anyone know of any wire in a gen4 that activates ONLY on high beam?

I'm trying to set up my spotties, and it seems that the negative trigger through the headlight switch becomes active again when the ignition is switched off? It must be possible, because plenty of other people have spotties on theirs!

ScubyRoo · Post by **ScubyRoo** » Fri Jun 25, 2010 5:04 pm

When I wired in mine on my gen 1 lib, the wire colours were completely different to what the FSM said they would be, so I went about it the 'hard' way...

I presume you have a multimeter? If so then I did the following:

With lights off:
Put LH indicator ON and probe around the harness connections on the steering column - I'm pretty sure there is about 4 of them.
When you find the indicator plug (easy to tell as its voltage will be going up down up down up down) then you're on the right harness plug to find your highbeam wire.
Record the colour/location of wire for that indicator and then find the RH indicator and record wire colour/location
Turn your indicators off and turn your headlights on (low beam)

Headlights on (low beam)
Find light wire and record colour/location

Headlights on (high beam)
You should now only have one wire left, if not probe for the wire that has 12v or similar with the highbeams ON but 0v with highbeams OFF.
This should be the wire you are splicing your switch into. Legally, you need to have your spotties on a remote switch so that you can have highbeam without spotties. I connected in at the lights side of the connector just to keep the steering column clean.

Hope shed some light on your quandary!

Cheers,
Owen.

AlpineRaven · Post by **AlpineRaven** » Fri Jun 25, 2010 6:11 pm

Yep that is other way.. Its because Subaru has Negative to Positive - real pain in the arse.. anyway...

My way which I am very happy with what I have in mine, I bought these on ebay -
H4 male connector
H4 female connector

In the middle of the full beam wire when you find it, cut it in half then put female connectors on it, that will connect onto a relay & another heavy duty wire direct from battery, the power which comes from full beam will go directly to the relay and switch on the switching relay to activate the full beam and its better & brighter that way and relieves stress of melting wires from your original full beam wire and another good thing on the relay will have two ports for two separate lights, you will need to do that setup for left and right headlights.

That setup what I've said is a very good setup and better/safer. If you want a wiring diagram to modify let me know. I have that in my Liberty at the moment.
Cheers
AP

ScubyRoo · Post by **ScubyRoo** » Mon Jun 28, 2010 8:48 am

wiring diagram please

tmiller1079 · Post by **tmiller1079** » Mon Jun 28, 2010 12:18 pm

Cheers for all your combined efforts, guys

It certainly helps having others helping out.. I've got it sussed now, with the help of a second relay - but here's the catch. On later model Subarus, the headlight wiring (like most things) goes through computers and relays. Hence, if you just used the high-beam wire from the headlight switch, the spotties would come on when you turned the car off (because that wire goes open-circuit when the computer and relays shut down).

Also, I needed to make mine + switching, because I'm running it with some other gear SO I found a 12v+ wire behind the instrument cluster that comes on with the headlight, and used it with the - high-beam trigger to run a little relay under the dash. This relay then delivers 12V+ to the spotlight switch!

This link should get you to my wiring diagram:
http://img37.imagefra.me/img/img37/8/6/ ... ed8242.png

legacytt · Post by **legacytt** » Mon Jun 28, 2010 7:58 pm

The other way is to earth the relay for the driving lights through the earth wire for the headlights as the modern lights are earth switching. In earlier models the relay is earthed to the body but as you say this results in the lights on wheneverything else is off in the newer ones.