help please - wiring my 6 offroad lights on Gobi rack

[dna]

I bought a used Gobi that came with 4 Hella offroad lights on the front and 2 on the back. I've had the rack on for years but never bothered to connect the lights. Well, I've now managed to get them wired, though not sure if I've done it right.

From a previous spotlight purchase, I had a surplus 30A relay. I wired the red to the battery with in-line fuse, the black to the battery ground, and then ran that same black ground to all the 6 Hella lights. I then spliced the blue (from relay) and ran each to 2 separate swithes, and the other leads on each switch I ran one to the front 4 and the other switch lead to the 2 back. The relay has one last wire - the white. I believe this a low-voltage wire which needs power to activate the relay and send power to the blue. I believe the white is intended to be feed from ignition power or head-light power, etc. I did test the wiring by connected the white directly to battery POS, and everything worked as intended. Below are my questions:

1) do I even need a relay? What is the relay for? If I bypass and simply connect POS to battery and NEG to battery and then have my switches in between the POS runs to the lights, is this not sufficient? The power would not feed the lights unless the switches were on, so why even need a relay?

2) if I need a relay, is the 30A surplus one I had big enough for 6 Hella lights?

3) If I connect the white (on relay) to battery POS direct (vs ignition), will the relay draw power (drain battery) even if the two switches are off and thus the lights not on? Being that the white is intended for low voltage (I believe) is there a problem connecting directly to battery POS.

4) when I tested my setup and had lights on for a minute, I found the wires were hot when I disconnected them from the battery. Is this normal?

5) lastly, I did the famous DRL to Pareking light diode feed years ago (the one that alolows the DRL to stay on all the time even when the headlights turn on). This involved jumping a wire between the #86/87 leads on the two relays. If I do need the white wire on my relay to be low volatge OR need the white on igntion to avoid battery drain (vs direct on battery), then can I touch/connect this white to the same #86/87 on the DRL relay? Since this DRL #86/87 only gets power when the truck starts, then I assume this DRL #86/87 then would feed low voltage to my new offroad light relay which then would activate the relay and feed high volatge via the blue wire. Does this make sense?

I'll post some pics once I get it all connected.

Thanks

[H2Finally]

dna, I'm not familiar with your lights' exact wiring, but in general, while the lights should be directly wired to battery (fused appropriately), the switch itself should control the lights only through relays, because:

1) to protect the switch, which is usually meant to handle only the small current to turn on/off the relay (which in turn turn on/off the lights), and not the big current draw of the lights directly.

2) to control power AVAILABILITY to the switch (and hence, to the lights) -- to be available all-the-time (power direct from battery), ignition-on-only (power from a fuse/circuit that's hot only with ignition on), or RAP (like the way the radio power works). This way you could not accidentally flip the switch during the day (& not notice the lights on), only to come back at night to a dead car battery.

3) to prevent wiring from becoming hot (dangerous!), because 6 off-road lights would draw a LOT of current. So, ideally each pair of lights should have it's own 10 or 12 gauge wiring, connected to its own relay. All the relays (and hence all the lights) could then be triggered from a single switch inside the cabin. Adequate wiring is also said to improve brightness of the bulbs.

Hope this helps.