headlight high amperage draw

First allow me to thank whoever may decide to assist me, as this trouble shoot may get a little rough. The vehicle is a custom built Renegade Trike ( www.renegdaetrikes.com). The Trike has a single high/low headlight fixture running a 55/60 H4 bulb, but there are also two auxilary lights on the bike both running 55/60 H4s. The auxilary lights only have the low beam circuit hooked up and are wired with 12ga wire to a relay allowing them to draw directly from a fused IGN circuit (12ga wire to position 30). The trigger or signal wire (position 86) to the relay is a LED switch drawing 12V+ from the dash light circuit, wired back to the relay with 14ga wire...

The problem is; with the Trike running, when the switch for the auxilary lights are turned on the voltage gauge in the dash drops almost immediately from 13V to about 11.5V. The Trike has a 100amp single wire alternator, and a 720CCA battery, which should be more than enough of a power supply. Both alternator and battery have been tested... both are good.

...Any ideas or suggestions, I can also PM or email photos of anything if needed.

Thanks,

-Dixon

hi, measure the voltage drop across the ignition switch...battery feed of switch and the ignition circuit where your aux lighting relay is connected. you may be overloading the stock ignition switch. change the ignition feed circuit to a battery feed circuit instead. do the lights turn off with the key, the circuit you are using to trigger the relay? mark

Thanks Ween hadn't thought to check the IGN switch itself... so I bypassed it running a 10ga. from battery to position 30 on relay. and yea the trigger wire (position 86 on relay) is wired on an IGN circuit so even by changing position 30 to a constant on circuit the lights still shut off with the keyed switch.

HOWEVER, I am still stumped... Turned the Trike on it was charging 13V, flipped the light switch and the voltage slowly dropped to 11.5V. Turned the Trike off, turned Trike back on, charged 13V, flipped light switch, dropped to 12.5V, did this 4 more times and the Trike never dropped below 12.5V, But I did NOT change anything.

Any ideas? 

-Dixon

if you have a multimeter, compare the voltmeter gauge to the multimeter.  single wire alternators typically need the engine to be rev'd up to start the voltage regulator built in to the alternator.

mark