Technical Wiring upgrades worthwhile? Headlamps/horn

[Jamie KC]

Two things I’m finding a little unsatisfactory on the '14 Panda is the headlamp and horn performance.

I’m changing the bulbs to Night Breaker +200 and am happy to suffer the reduced lifespan for increased vision in the dark. And I’ll source a better horn, prob two tone that sounds like it should be on a much larger vehicle.

Q - is the Panda known for having adequate or inadequate wiring to supply the current to lamps/horn? If the factory wiring is a bit weedy I’d rather upgrade to battery fed relays and thicker gauge cables and use the originals as the switch wires. Don’t want to do it if not worth it, so is it worth it?

Any recommendations on a good set of horns welcomed too. Thanks

 

[Herts Hillhopper]

The wiring to the headlights has been subject of many discussions here, as it appears there are no relays for the dip beam and it's all controlled through the body computer. Like all the other cables in the car (and true for most CanBus cars these days) the wires seem unfeasibly thin, but seem to work OK. My Panda has run with 150% brighter bulbs from day two and all has been fine. Although brighter, mine are still the same wattage as standard (55/60w) though. AS mentioned in another post of mine somewhere, I also improved my headlights by aligning them correctly! The up/down setting was fine but they converged (left pointing slightly right and vice versa) which meant on main beam the light didn't spread fully. Once corrected and with the brighter bulbs they not so bad. My other car has modern LED headlights and the Panda will never match that!

I agree about the horn and have looked down at where it sits and thought "another time, maybe..."

 

[AndyRKett]

The wiring has to be designed to be able to cope with the load placed on it, at the voltage and current that the lights and horn will require.

For example a 55w bulb with the engine running and maybe 14volts out of the battery will draw about 4Amps (watts divided by the volts = amps)

If the wiring was not up to the job of delivering 14volts at 4 amps the wiring would over heat and quickly burn out. (The same basic principles of how a fuse works, if the circuit draws too much current the fuse burns out.

You can go on online wiring calculator and plumb those figures In and see that it would only need a wiring thickness of Awg 14, or about 1.6mm thickness.

So while the wiring might seem thin it will have been engineered to be up to the job, fitting thicker wires will do nothing at all to the brightness of the lights or loudness of the horn.

While there is no user serviceable relay, there is likely to be a relay inside the body computer controlling the switching of the lights