I am hooking up my hid's to my truck I got the 55w 6000k kit through ddm and my question is when I hook it up to the batteries am I supposed to undo the battery completely then hook it back up with the ground and positive wires hooked up to it? I know its a stupid question but I just don't want to zap myself lol

 

At a minimum, your postive battery terminals should be disconnected at all times doing electrical work. they should be isolated so they cant touch and short to the battery terminal. When you are ready its the last you disconnect. Remember, diesels have two batteries. (the reason you dont just disconnect the grounds is that if anything touchs ground, you will have a short and sparks.) Remember, those batteries have enough in them to kill you, be careful what you are doing. Also, I am extra careful, wrap and tie off the pos when doing work, shorts can kill computers, displays, alternators ect.

 

mhoefer wrote:
No they don't! I'm not saying that you shouldn't be careful when working around the battery terminals, so that you don't short them or touch a positive wire or terminal to ground, but to say they have enough in there to kill you, not so much. You can grab a pos. terminal with one hand and the negative terminal with the other hand and you will not be shocked. Current flow through the body needs far less resistance than you have in your body, given that the voltage on a truck/car system is slightly over 12VDC.

 

Its not volts its Amps that can kill and burn severely. All it takes is about 1/10th of an amp through your chest and it can stop your heart. If there is no one there to see you got zapped, you are done. I am not saying this is a regular occurance either but the OP had a question and this is the right way to work safely on the vehicle. A simple ten amp curcuit is enough to do the damage by a 100 fold margin.

 

Actually, it's less than 1/10th of an amp, somewhere around 50 to 60 milliamps. I've been a Journeyman Electrician for over thirty years and believe me, I know a little about the subject. The issue is the voltage at the battery. The human body's internal resistance is too high for 12V to effectively cause current flow at a high enough rate to harm you. Voltage is the pressure, current is the amount of flow, and resistance is just that, the factor that limits the amount of current to flow.

 

Yes I know its less than a 10th, but you see, my point is, a little sweat, a contact with power and ground is all it takes. If you are a journeyman sparky, you shouldnt make light of the dangers in my opinion, as the OP was asking a simple question which I believe I responded to correctly and safely.

 

resistance...just like that DPF on the exhaust!


15mA through the heart is enough to kill an adult; about 10mA to kill a kid. I researched this when I was a 12yo kid playing with open and powered 25" B/W tube TV's trying to figure out how to use its flyback to build an electric fence.. AC current flows through the body more easily than DC. 12VDC won't do anything to anyone--you'll at most get a real good tingle on the tongue if you lick it like a 9V battery :-)

It's ok to work on the truck with power hooked up. I installed my HID's with nothing disconnected. The only time I disconnect is when I'm working around gasoline or a starter. Don't want to be sparking anything with fuel dripping everywhere while changing fuel filters, especially if the starter is right next to it.

What yall really need to be careful is not 12V itself, but the heat generated by direct shorts and such. You won't get killed, but you can get burned and hurt real good if you accidentally spark and arc weld a wrench across the battery terminals. Then when that happens, your natural reflexes will tend to jerk your arms/legs into something sharp.

 

Sorry guys, I have a nice 3 inch scar across my upper chest from an exploding battery. It ain't the voltage that will kill you, it is the spark that ignites the released hydrogen that denotates the battery that will kill ya....

Not to mention the cornea damage from the sulfuric acid in the eyes...

 

Don't get me wrong, shorting yourself to a battery can possibly electrocute you, but you are more likey to die from the exploding battery than electrocuting yourself on a car battery.

 

First of all, I'm NOT a "Journeyman Sparky", I'm a Journeyman Electrician! I didn't go through some half baked, make believe program and earn a "Sparky" certification. My Journeyman papers are from the United States Dept of Labor, Bureau of Apprenticeship Standards. You still apparently don't understand the concept of what it takes to cause XX amount of current flow. Basic ohms law would dictate that I = E/R which is current= Voltage/Resistance. The average person would show 3 to 5 million ohms of resistance from one hand to the other, up the arm and through the chest and down to the other hand. Divide that by a measly 12 or 13 volts and you get......... .000004 amps of current, which, as I stated in my first post, is no where near enough current to kill someone. You, my friend are wrong in the "those batteries have enough to kill you" comment. Also, as I stated earlier, you SHOULD be careful when working around batteries so that you don't, cause a spark by touching the positive terminal and the negative terminal or ground/frame of the vehicle. A direct short across a battery is a recipe for an explosion if mixed with the hydrogen gas that is most likely present from a battery. The arc flash generated from such an event can also cause serious burns to the skin..........but the 12V battery ain't gonna generate enough current to kill you.

 

BTW, I hooked up my HIDs with the battery still hooked up. At some point, the battery wires and the feed to the relay will have to be hooked up.

 

Hi Sparky! I will be tackling my HID setup tomorrow. Where did you mount your ballasts? I saw Epic's installation and he has somewhere behind the lights themselves. Where did you install your's?

 

Marauder you shouldn't have called him Sparky, now he wont answer you, I think you can figure it out, H N Year

 

The kit I got had two double sided sticky pieces of foam and I just attached it to the back of headlight. It fit perfectly

 

Maurader....wrote:
Duh, someplace that they wouldn't ...........Spark!