aux lighting, big 3 upgrade questions..
 

just wanted to start off and say hi to everyone. lurked for a while and joined but never posted, but im an active poster on t4r.org

so im looking to add two driving lights and two more fog lights to my '01 sr5 4runner, both of which will be piaa 520 series lights, and im wondering what needs to be done before these lights are put to work. i keep hearing things about the big 3 upgrade, but i cant seem to find anything. if someone would be able to explain or provide a link that would be very helpful.

my main concern is that i want to be able to provide enough power to all four lights, including my headlights, and my factory fogs. to top it all off, i have a sound system in the car that includes one 10 inch sub and a 500 watt amp.

any suggestions?

Heres a few links that came up on search. Some reading to do...

https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f2/w...upgrade-47426/

https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f131...upgrade-95850/

https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f131...e-link-150052/

Also I see you are in Folsom, I go to school at Folsom Lake College.

Oh is your amp 500 watts max or rated power? If its 500RMS you should already have a capacitor on it. I have 500 rms with no capacitor and its a little much, really dims the headlights.

Maybe high output alternator.

haha i go to school there as well... at least for now, trying to transfer asap

and its a jl audio 500 rms, but those things can push 750 with ease..... and no capacitor

and thank you for the links, i will be doing this sometime next week.

but as stated, is there anything else that needs to be done to be able to run all of these lights? i mean it will be 8 lights running all at once including the factory fogs and headlights on the trails, and i dont want to have to call someone all the way out there to jump my car

figure out your total amp draw with everything on and compare that to your alternator output.

no need to run your factory foglights with 6 other lights on, their out put sucks to begin with and will be over powered by the output of the other lights anyway.

..... hmm, very true. well i figure if im gonna beef it up its gonna cost almost the same to do it a little bit or alot, so i might as well go all out in case i decide to mount backup lights or more spot lights on my basket

The driving lights are usually 55 watt, what are yours? I know I can run the headlights (brights), stereo (no amp), and 4 100 watt auxiliary lights, more would work so it depends. Also do you really want to bump while off roading?

im not going to be, but it would be nice to know i can.... i guess


and are you running all of those without changing any of the stock wiring?