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Old November 26th 2011, 20:44
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owdlvr owdlvr is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Canada - West Coast
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Hi Mikey,

After thinking about it for a while, there isnt an _easy_ way to use the three separate tailight bulbs without adding a new circuit to the system. If it were my car, here's what i would do: Use the Kwik Wire harness for the taillight and turn signals, but not the brake light switch. The easiest way to do that is to simply not hook up the brake light switch section of the harness. (Ref: page#23 Wire #18 and Wire #17). Otherwise, on page 24 connect the turn signal wires (Green wires) to your turn signal bulbs and the taillamp wires (brown) to the taillamp bulbs. So by now you should have the taillamp wire connected to the running lamp bulb, and the turn signal/brake light wire connected to the turn signal bulb. Once you've skipped the steps i mentioned the Kwik harness should still work for your running lamps, turn signals and hazzards...but not brake lights. (Wouldnt hurt to bench test it first!)

Now we need to make a brake light circuit. Im assuming at this point the ghia has a dual switch system with a warning light, similar to my 69-75 bugs. If you want to maintain the warning lamp system, its possible. But here, for ease of understanding, Im going show you the bare minimum to get brake lights working. For me, i will run my brakes off dual brake light switches, fused in every possible way so that if one switch fails i still have lights, and if a fuse blows I can quickly know what part of the system is a problem. I dont need an idiot light to tell me one of the front or rear brake systems have failed...I'll feel it! So no warning system for me.


The simplest method:



So first up, get a 5-tab standard automotive relay. You'll also need one fuse holder, or one free circuit on your kwik fuse panel. The brake light switch has three terminals. You'll need to connect tab 82a to chassis ground. The switched side of the brake light switch (81) is going to go to the ground terminal on the automotive relay (terminal 85). The switch and power side of the relay (terminal 86 and 30) need to go through a 15amp fuse to positive battery power (always on). The 87 and 87A terminals of your relay are connected to the brake light bulbs. Advatanges: this is the absolute minimum you need to to have functional brake lights. Disadvantages: the system has no redundancy. If the brake light switch fails, or one bulb/wire grounds out you lose all your brake lights.



Best (and a bit over fused) method:



Go and get two Automotive 5 terminal relays. Get four fuse holders (or four available circuits in your panel).

On brake light switch A, connect terminal 82a to ground. And the termninal 81 to terminal 85 of both relay #1 and relay #2.
On brake light switch B, terminal 82a to ground. And the termninal 81 to terminal 85 of both relay #1 and relay #2.
The 86 terminal of both relay 1 and relay 2 are connected to always-on power through a 5amp fuse. Use one fuse per relay. Connect each terminal 30 on the relay to always-on-power through a 15amp fuse. Use one fuse per relay.

On relay 1, connect terminal 87 to the left side brake light. On relay 2 connect terminal 87 to the right side brake light.

In this case, if one bulb blows a fuse the other side will still work. If one brake light switch fails, the other switch will still keep your brake lights working.

-Dave
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