About a year and a half ago, I decided to wire up the RED high beam headlights that I had installed on my 1961 Lincoln convertible - for show and parade use only. I made NO change to the existing car wiring. I simply disconnected the factory headlight connectors, and added a new RED light dedicated wiring circuit. I also added indicators for each flashing light to flash along with the actual headlights.
This can all be removed and the car can be easily be put back to factory.
My challenge was to find a way to make the headlight alternate ON and OFF.
Of course, I am sure that such emergency type of devices can be bought (maybe not cheap) - while that would be the easy way, it would not be the cowboy way!
Hence, I thought about two things. One being a turn indicator flasher unit, that has power on and power off cycles. Secondly, I thought about a Relay that could be wired so that a completed circuit would exist when the signal power was OFF. What I came up with is shown on the wiring schematic below, and on the photo of my Alternating Flashing Unit. It cost about $7.00. Of course, it could be mounted in a PVC pipe and sealed with only the wires protruding or something of the sort, but this was my first one I made. There are four wires to connect: Power, Ground, Light One, and Light Two. Amazingly, it works!
When the Flasher is OFF, the Relay is Closed - the first light is ON
When the Flasher is ON, the Relay is Open, but - the second light is ON
I suppose that this unit could be used for other applications as well.
Enjoy!
- Alternating Headlight Flashing Unit
- Alternating Flashing Unit Wiring Schematic
- Left Headlight ON
- Right Headlight ON