E-brake Wiring Issues, Very, very, incredibly weird Options

[Coomer]

Hi,
I am having some weird issues with the e-brake wire on my car. What I want to accomplish is having +12 volts go to a terminal on a relay once the e-brake is released and is down, and the ignition is on. When I tested my '94 Toyota Celica's e-brake wire with a multimeter, it produced +12 volts when it was released and the ignition was on, and didn't when the e-brake was up, or the ignition was off. So I spliced a wire into this e-brake wire, and then I ran the wire to the terminal on my relay, and it produced some strange results.

What happens is that when my e-brake is up and the ignition is on, the brake light on the gauge cluster was lit up like it should be, but when I released the e-brake, the light didn't turn off like it should, and instead only got dimmer. So I figured that I was getting some sort of voltage coming from the relay that was going back into the wire, so I installed a diode in the wire that I spliced into the e-brake wire, but that didn't change anything. So I figured that I must be pulling too much power from the e-brake wire, so it must not be sending a full +12 volts to the car, resulting in the light only being partially lit up. So, I hooked up terminal 85 of a SPDT relay to ground, terminal 86 to the e-brake wire, terminal 30 to a fused +12 volt power source, and terminal 87 to the terminal on the relay that should be getting +12 volts once the e-brake is released. This didn't change anything either though.

So now I am completely confused, and I have no idea why my terminal of my relay isn't getting +12 volts, and why e-brake light stays partially lit up when the e-brake is released and the ignition is on. Does anyone have any ideas as to what I could do to try to solve my problem?

[polishchacha]

If I'm reading this correctly, what you've done is basically create a series circut that is "bleeding" current back to your pannel. It depends on just what kind of relay you have, but I would sudgest getting one similar to a fuse pannel, that way you create a parallel circut that is "Hot" constantly and you can supply 12volts to anything you want individually or simultaniously without overloading or "bleeding" .
Simply wire the pannel directly with your e-brake's pwr. cord and ground it, and hook up what ever else you need to the terminal points. You'll be creating another Pwr. point to run things off of that is a little easier to get to than the fuse box and your e-brake light should act right b/c you've isolated it's ground and pwr. Hope that helps.

[polishchacha]

as a side note, I use marine fuse pannels, they're 12 volt , a little more heavy duty, and tons easier to work with than most auto fuse pannels that I've found.

[Coomer]

If I got one of those fuse panels, one wire would go to the e-brake wire that gets power, and another wire would go to a ground, right? Wouldn't there need to be one more wire which gets constant power?

Also, how is this much different than a SPDT automotive relay? With a relay, you're only using a tiny, tiny bit of power that's required to engergize the coil, and then the relay powers whatever you're powering with a different +12 volts power source.

[polishchacha]

right, you would have to attatch the wires,, I'll e-mail you what I'm talking about..

[Coomer]

Ok, that sounds great. Thanks!

[Coomer]

I had a chance to look at that wiring diagram, and it looks like it does the same thing as a SPDT relay would, and a SPDT relay hardly draws any power at all and still causes problems.

Do you know exactly how much power most of those fuse panels draw?