I purchased a Rigid Industries radiance light bar for my 350. I have the factory installed upfitter switches. I plan to run my light bar off of these.

The difference with the radiance light bar vs a standard lightbar is that it has a backlit feature that would run on it's own switch.

I purchased the radiance wiring harness, and after looking it over it comes with 2 switches, one fuse holder that I would need to put a 30 amp fuse in, and one relay.

The wiring schematic and the kit itself is really easy, if I wanted to use their required switches.

What I want to do is not use the wiring kit, run my own wires for each set of lights, and use the power from the upfitter switches to power each set of lights.

The only thing I am not sure of is what the relay does on this kit. I think it is just a relay that sends power to what ever switch you have toggled on to the correct set of lights. If I do indeed use different upfitter switches for each light, I shouldn't need a relay of any kind.

Am I on the right track here? This is the first truck I have had with upfitter switches installed.

Thanks for any insight you old pros on here have with the upfitters.

I have included some links to what I am referencing.

Wiring Harness
Radiance Multi-Trigger Harness 40200 | Rigid Industries

30 inch lightbar
Radiance 30" Red Back-Light Surface White Black... | Rigid Industries

 

The E2 30" - Combo is a way better light if it will fit.

 

Your choice on the red lights. Around here red lights forward will buy you a ticket!!

 

Haha.

Ok.

2 replies, one for a better light bar and another with a light law.

Btw that E2 30 better be a better light for 1200 dollars.

Anyone here with any advice on INSTALL?

 

Auxiliary lights should always be installed with a relay.

 

The upfitter switches provide the relays, fuses, and switches.
See: https://www.fleet.ford.com/truckbbas/non-html/Q-252.pdf


OP, if you use the upfitter switches, I see no use for the relay. Just connect it to the upfitter switches mimicking circuits 1 and 2 of the harness. The relay they provided on the harness (which you are questioning) should be on the high power side, it allows them to use the [lower rated] switches they have provided with the harness. Your instincts are correct.

 

Yeah you pretty much are.

The relay is only related to the operation of the LED bar itself, not the radiance side of it. So the relay is taking Rigid's rocker switch as the input line and powering up the bar if that harness is connected to the battery according to their instructions.

If you want to use two upfitters for this, I wouldn't install that harness. Take that harness and cut off the pigtail end that plugs in to the light bar and use those leads to tie in to - take as much wiring back as you can and hopefully it will reach the pass-thru wires at the firewall from your upfitter leads. It might take some figuring since I don't have the light in front of me or what the pigtail look like but it shouldn't be hard:

Work backwards from the light and determine which hot wire of the pigtail powers the light bar and wire that to the output of the upfitter switch of your choice. The other should be the hot wire for the radiance portion of lighting, wire that to the second upfitter of your choice. If the pigtail is a three wire - which it sounds like it is from reading, then it's a common ground and that can be ran to a chassis ground that you make. If there are four wires, each light function having their own ground then you can ground those out together on a chassis ground anyways.

Auxiliary lighting doesn't need to be relayed, but it should always be fused - and using upfitters covers this.

Hopefully that helps. If not, put up a picture of the pigtail ends of the light bar and that Rigid harness showing the wires and I'll try to reference it that way.

 

Beat me to it while typing!

Exactly though.

 

LOL! Well, you did take the time to make a more detailed explanation. I've been doing this for 30 years. The only real change is that the LED lights available today don't normally need relays, unless they are huge.

 

Thank you fellas. That is exactly what I needed.

Now to get to work on it.

One last question, on the 2017, do you need to go under the dash and hook up the upfitter switches to the pass through wires that are under the hood?

I know on the older models you did have to do this.

Reading that bulletin that was posted, thanks for posting btw, it does not mention needing to do this but does give a really nice schematic.

I guess an easy way to find that out would be to simple pull out the multi meter and turn an upfitter switch on to see if it is hot.

 

The upfitter switches are blunt-cut under the hood now, so you'll only need the pass-through wires if you want to send power from the switch inside.

 

Thanks for the reply. That makes it a ton easier. Hopefully this weekend I will have some time to wire this all up.

 

I went ahead and wired up my light bar today.

Extremely easy install. I didn't need the 80 dollar rigid harnes.

All I needed was some wiring and some connectors, some heat shrink tubing and wire abrasion tubing and I installed it in about an hour.

Doing it again i could probably wire it wire it all up in well under an hour.

Those upfitter switches are nice to have.

 

Did you run switch 1 to the lights, switch 2 to the background lighting?

 

I used 6 for the light, 4 for the LED back lighting.