Wiring lights

[Laminarman]

I'm trying to put some flood lamps on my ROPS pointing forward. My two beams are rubber coated and have one black wire each coming out of them. I do have a flood pointing rearward hooked to a switch that works fine, but it's got both a ground and power wire. These beams have no ground wire, and when I hook them up to the power at the switch they don't go go one. I spliced them together then ran them to the switch. Absolutely no instructions with the lights. Any help appreciated.

 

[gordon21]

The fixture is relying on it's inner metal housing to be grounded to the frame of whatever it is attached to. Your ROPS surface is probably not grounded due to a thick coat of paint. You will need to add a ground wire directly to the bulb base fixture and then run it to a good grounding point or else an existing ground wire in the wiring harness. No ground=no completed circuit

The one wire is your positive lead which is the one to be switched. In this case, black means nothing about polarity. The mfgr just happened to use black wire for the + lead.

You could scape the paint off a small spot near the light and try to ground it there, but that still might not work. The ROPS is probably painted at the bottom and then bolted to another painted spot on the tractor. Two painted parts bolted together will not give you a good ground.

 

[mboulais]

I agree with lewis, You need to add a ground wire back to bare metal. If you can put a terminal end over the mounting screw for the light and run a wire down with your hot until you get to a handy spot to ground, it would work. If you have a trailer light connector on the back of the tractor, there should be a ground there.

 

[Laminarman]

You guys are awesome. Thanks, I'll give that a shot.

 

[woodlandfarms]

If you are tying into existing wiring you may want to consider a relay. If you are adding your own switch you should be fine if those are not too big of lamps...

Carl

 

[anojones]

I used the same lights and attatched them to my canopy. I just removed the rubber housing and spliced wire to the inside ground wire and ran it out of the rubber housing with the hot wire and grounded it to the tractor by running in down inside of the ROPS to a ground point. Those lights confused me at first as well.