So I finally decided to undertake my roof light wiring project and got a good ways through it, and periodically tested things to make sure the lights worked at various stages as I went along to make sure I was doing things right since this is my first electrical project I've ever undertaken.

I got everything working through to the point of getting past the fire wall before going through the roof. After getting through the roof and then shortening the massively excessive length off the hot fused leads from the battery to help keep things more tiddy in the engine compartment I reconnected to the lights to make sure everything was still working before mounting the lamps to the roof rack.

I got two out of the four lights to come on, and figured that I didn't have a good connection with the other two so I just fiddled with things a bit to get all of them to come on. Nothing. After a bit more fiddling none of the lights worked. I checked on the fuses as a starting point and both 15 amp fuses were burnt out.

Not sure if I inadvertently did something by shortening the fused leads to the relays that caused the fuses to burn out, or perhaps I maybe accidently cut the casing for the wires from snaking them through the roof and a short caused the fuses to burnout.

As background, I kept both fused leads separate going to their respective relays that came in the Hella 500 wiring kit, then pig tailed the wires from the relay going to just one switch in the cabin since I read on here that you can do that rather than having two sets of switches since I only plan on running all 4 lights at the same time when I need them.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Start by replacing the fuses. See what happens.

Define "fiddled with"
If you were messing with the connections at power, with the relay on, you may have noticed sparks? These arcs can cuase small surges that can and will blow fuses.

By "fiddled with" I mean just wiggling the wire further into the impromptu connection right at the light to make sure there was a good enough contact to close the circuit and power the lights on.

I didn't mess with anything from the battery to the relay, and didn't see any arc/sparking of any kind.

Not sure if I should just replace the fuses with the same 15 amp that came with the original wiring kit, but someone on ENH.com suggested the following:

"With just 4 hella 500s you only need one 30 amp reply and a 25 amp fuse. All 4 lights are only pulling 18 amps. So i would run a 25 amp fuse for start up spikes."

I am guessing that the original wiring kit came with the right spec'd fuse so as not to risk burning out wires from overloading them and causing other nasty damage, but is it possible that this might need something bigger in terms of fuse amp rating and can handle it without neglecting what could be another issue altogether at hand?

They came with 15 amp fuses for a reason. Replace them with the same. The 25 amp he's talking about is if all 4 are on the same circuit, and is actually 5 less than your total assumed ampere rating. Try just replacing them and see happens. Adjusting the connections may have created a spike somewhere.

Holla!I did it couple of times before and i could not run all 4 at the same time even with 25 amp fuse my switch would get so hot that i was thinking its gonna catch fire! i recently installed hella optilux 1900 on my X,and when i drilled holes in my roof, the drill bit left sharp edges, thats what caused my shortage but thankfully that problem was spotted really quick, it was the first place that i looked at ! so my suggestion is check all the spots where u drilled at(fire wall, roof etc.) and good like spotting the problem!!!

Thanks for all the input! Greatly appreciated!

So I FINALLY figured it all out after being countless hours into this project. All in all I'm glad I did it myself since the next time I have to do something like this it will be much easier since I actually understand it all now.

Short of the long here is what the issues were: 1. Two of the lights had the internal wiring reversed, so that screwed up that connection and blew fuses. 2. In my attempt to keep testing things as I went along without solid connections in place, I was shorting things out inadvertently and blowing fuses.

I'll post pics in a day or so since I don't have any of my rig here. Thanks again for all the help!

OK, as promised here are some pics of the finished install along with some other pics before putting on my winch and doing the PML:

http://s799.photobucket.com/home/k29398

This pic just shows the trailer disconnect so I can remove the lights whenever I want:

http://s799.photobucket.com/albums/yy27 ... g&newest=1