Hey everyone I got a 1978 f250 ford highboy wanting to run led chicken lights every 10 inches or so along the bottom of the body and on the bumper with the led warning flashers that oversize load semis have on their trucks never played around with chicken lights or wiring so I don't know what this entitles me doing in sorts of wiring and such want my truck to be one of a kind any ideas and or help would be greatly appreciated by anyone who knows such thank you!!

 

The wiring will be simple, especially if you use LED lights. You just run a wire from light to light to light, and it dead ends somewhere and the other end will hook to your power source.

The hard part is the wiring methods and mounting. Most lights only have a single wire. They need to be well grounded where they mount. So if you have your truck painted up nice, you will need to scrape some of that paint away where the metal part of the light mounts. Or if you intend to mount the light on some sort of non-conductive bracket or plastic, you will need to run a short ground wire from the light mounting screw to a good ground spot on the frame somewhere. If you do not want to rely on the frame for a ground you can run two wires from light to light, one of them being a ground. This is usually a good idea on very rusty trucks.

Another important thing to do is run your wiring neatly, tying it up out of harms way, and if you go through any holes that you have cut, slide the wire through a piece of vacuum line or some sort of grommet so over time the sharp edge of the hole will not cut through the wire. If you run that split plastic loom if will prevent a lot of these types of problems.

And if you do have a problem, it's a good idea to run a inline fuse with your new lights. If the lights have a spec on the amp draw, multiply this by the number of lights you intend to run and install a fuse slightly larger than that.

 

Where would I run the power from should I run from the battery with that in line fuse? Like I said I'm not smart when it comes to electrical on a vehicle.

 

It depends on how and when you want the lights to work. If your amp draw adds up to be very small and you want a manual switch, just get a fuse tap and put that on a fuse in the fuse box. Pick a fuse that is on with the ignition switch if you want them to only work with the key on. Pick a fuse that is hot all the time if you want them to work all the time.

If you want them to work with the running lights, find a brown wire running from the headlight switch and tie them in there.

All the above is if the total load is about 2 amps or so. If your load will be higher, you can add a relay and run the fuse directly off the battery like you suggested to the relay. Then the relay will feed the lights. There will be a small wire running from the relay coil to the circuit you want to power the relay, which will turn the lights on. This can be like before, a switch or directly to the fuse box or a lighting circuit.