Adding lights

Looking at adding a couple 27w led lights on the front of my 500 sportsman. Just wondering if I can wire them in with the stock headlights or should I add new wiring and another switch?

It will be easy to wire into the current light harness, however you need to know how many amps the stock wire is rated for and the fuse that is in the current line.
27 watts at 12v is 2.25 amps for each bulb.
You can easily add an extension wire on your + lead to run to a switch that would control the lights.
But as mentioned make sure the stock wire and fuse will handle the extra amperage.

Mark is correct, you need to figure out if the existing wires and fuse can handle an additional 5 amps. I say 5 amps to add a little fudge/safety factor in terms of length of the wire run, terminal resistance, etc.

So you need to know three more things:
1. Current draw of current lights.
2. Gauge size of the current wire.
3. Amperage of the current fuse that protects the circuit the lights are on.

For example, the max capacity of a short run of 18 gauge wire (not compensating for resistance over distance of the run) is 10 amps. That’s the absolute max. So if you had 18 gauge wire and assuming your current headlights used 5 amps, you could not safely add the additional lights, IMO. You would need at least 16 gauge.

In general, I will tell you that automotive and marine wire from the factor is almost ALWAYS the bare minimum they can get by with to run the electrical as it comes from the factory. This is almost always a bad idea but it’s done for cost reasons, but it means you nearly always have to pull new wire if adding anything that draws more than an amp or two.

Grouse

Thanks guys. Think I’ll just run wiring to be safe.