Moving Parking Lights to Ignition Power (Battery Saver)

[OsoMoore]

As detailed in my previous post (A fix for the forgetful?), I wanted to stop my parking lights from running down my battery if I left them on.

After getting some input, I followed SpyderMike's idea and wired in a relay. Now the parking light switch turns on and off a relay. That relay in turn passes ignition-switched power to the parking lights. Thus, if the ignition is off, the parking lights can't be on.

[img]forums.pelicanparts.com/uploads26/parking_light_ignition1498313547.png[/img]

Hopefully other people can benefit from this simple change. The relays I used can be found here:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B017VDI0GY/

EDIT: Image insertion is broken? Here's a link to the image.
Schematic

[Norm01]

Don't think that schematic is right. 85/86 is your relay, 30/87 are the contacts. You should be triggering 86 with your ignition wire and your power from the fuses through 30/87. Right now you are powering your lights with whatever ignition source you chose and the wiring may not handle it.

[OsoMoore]

Originally Posted by Norm01

Don't think that schematic is right. 85/86 is your relay, 30/87 are the contacts. You should be triggering 86 with your ignition wire and your power from the fuses through 30/87. Right now you are powering your lights with whatever ignition source you chose and the wiring may not handle it.

Oops - that makes more sense. With that correction, leaving the lights on consumes 0 power because the relay is open. With the current (incorrect) wiring, leaving the lights on leaves the relay closed, which will have some power drain.

I will change that out tonight.

[OsoMoore]

I finally got some time, and fixed the wiring per Norm01's warning.

I still have a question - is it correct to keep the two parking light fuses in place, in parallel? My understanding is that this doubles the maximum current allowable, which could be too much for the circuit. Or should I really have two relays, both switched by ignition and each taking a different parking light power line.

[Tremelune]

There should be a fuse for "Parking Light Switched" as close to the battery as is practical. That wire and its fuse should be large enough to accommodate the current for both lights, though you must make sure the fuse is small enough for the wire gauge to protect it from catching fire in the event of a short. Leave the existing fuses where they are, as they still protect the wires going to the headlights, which will be of a smaller gauge (most of the time when a run of wire decreases in diameter, there should be a fuse). I can't really give fuse rating recommendations without knowing the gauge of the wiring.

"Ignition Switched" should also have a fuse somewhere...Presumably you are tapping it and running smaller gauge wire? If so, it should be fused when the wire gets smaller. If the gauge is the same, you don't need to add a fuse, because presumably it is already fused from the factory (this would be easier).

FUSES