Auxiliary Lighting Question

[Dunkelgrun]

Hello Z3 friends I am hoping to hook up some small LED aux lights to the lower front bumper area. I live in a very rural area, I can drive for miles without seeing another car but deer and even moose are common sightings. I am hoping some extra lights will help prevent a potential collision. My technical questions are...
1. Where is a good place to hook up the positive power lead? It’s usually the battery, but the Z battery is, of course, in the back. The lead wire has a fuse and a relay attached.
2. Where is a good place to run the wire through the firewall to a switch on the the dash? I have a good place to mount the switch, just would rather not drill through the firewall

or have to pull out half the dashboard.
3. Is this even advisable?

 

[Rudyrov]

There is a positive "jump post" in the engine compartment that could be used perhaps? But be very careful it's a full-on parallel tap for the battery used for battery jumping and therefore has full unfused power.

 

[the Nefyn cat]

One of these will give you fused power from the fuse box under the bonnet, as for going through the bulkhead you may well have redundant wires that already go through it (unfitted optional extras type of thing).

Pardon our interruption...

 

[IainP]

If I could make a suggestion, mounting them there will allow them to vibrate, the flicker is hugely annoying. Add a steady to the back, a worm drive clip is the simplest.
mounting them to the upper part of the bumper hanging down would have given a bit of extra range and kept the steady completely hidden.
I normally trigger them from the main beam with a relay, I haven’t looked, yet, where to take power from the fuse box.

 

[Dunkelgrun]

One of these will give you fused power from the fuse box under the bonnet, as for going through the bulkhead you may well have redundant wires that already go through it (unfitted optional extras type of thing).

Pardon our interruption...

I think I even have one of these already out in my “electrical stuff” box

 

[Dunkelgrun]

If I could make a suggestion, mounting them there will allow them to vibrate, the flicker is hugely annoying. Add a steady to the back, a worm drive clip is the simplest.
mounting them to the upper part of the bumper hanging down would have given a bit of extra range and kept the steady completely hidden.
I normally trigger them from the main beam with a relay, I haven’t looked, yet, where to take power from the fuse box.

Thanks for pointing that out, luckily they weren’t mounted yet but just zip-tied in place to see how they would look. I flipped it around and that works much better, it’s so obvious now that I see it...

 

[Nodzed]

@Mint and @gookah have done this they may offer advice

 

[Dunkelgrun]

So, looking into my fuse box for a safe place to run a fuse tap, I am finding fuse #6 to be a live 20amp fuse for “heated rear window and rear window blower”... I have a 1998 2.8 with a soft top, pretty sure there’s no heated window or blower. Why would this be a live fuse, and would this be a good place to tap into to run small aux lights? The light harness has a built in 20amp fuse...

 

[the Nefyn cat]

Hardtop has a heated window, no blower, though.

 

[Mint]

@Mint and @gookah have done this they may offer advice

I cheated, I took a meter to the electrical sorting out box by the master cylinder (RHD). I picked up an ignition fed live from there.