wiring off road lights

When you mentioned you had your relay, but the diagram said 87 and 87a should run to your lights is when i thought you had AZ relays. AZ is about the only place i have found relays wired like this. Was late at night, we were out of SPDT's and az was the only place i could get em... got em ... wired up my 5wire reversal, blew fuses left and right... finally sat there with a test meter and figured out why... screwed me up bad = ) about the only 5 pin SPDT relays i have came across wired differently than they are supposed to be

Ok... about the power wire for your relays to your switch. Most switches cant handle ALOT of amperage. If you were to use a single toggle switch to power something that was drawing lots of amps, the switch would get hot, possibily melt, and burn up quick. Using a switch to "trigger" a relay, uses very little amperage, meaning you can use 1 single switch to trigger many relays, and never run the risk of blowing the switch apart.

If you wire up your relays to your lights. 87 to lighting, 86 ground, 30 +12V, the lights are sitting there ready to come on. By placing a +12V on pin 85, the mechanical/electromagnetic switch inside the relay click over and make contact. Connecting 30 and 87, giving you power up and down through the relay, all the switch does is turn the relay on and off... the relay turns the lights on and off. Its alot more reliable to use this setup, opposed to using just the toggle swithc to turn your stuff on and off.