Electrical overload?

[Thenethiel]

I have a '95 5sfe Camry; if I'm sitting at idle at turn my brights on, it sounds like the engine (or something in there) is straining really hard, I have fog lights wired into my highbeams so they go on with the highs ( so when I flip on the brights I have 6 bulbs going, including the low-beams, I know I need to set up a relay/switch for the fogs, I'll get to that when I can). All of the lights are plenty bright, so I'm thinking maybe the alternator is able to put out enough power, but has to work the engine pretty hard to do it? I tried it last night idling in my driveway and the engine actually started overheating. If I'm driving around it's fine, I can't hear anything different and it never gets hot. Any ideas/suggestions greatly appreciated.

quick edit for general info, the car has almost 180k miles, and as far as I know the alternator is the original.

[Eye8Pussies]

when you say that the engine is overheating, do you mean that the coolant gauge goes up?

on that note though, the first things to do in these situations is to check both your battery and alternator, then look elsewhere.

a stock alternator working at its full capacity should not make a stock engine strain. maybe the bearing inside the alternator is about to seize. get everything checked out.

[toyomoho]

With the lights on, what is the engine RPM reading? When the engine is idling and starts to overheat, do the coolant fans start to cycle on/off.

[Thenethiel]

When I said overheating I just meant the temperature gauge next to the tach was going up, but I was messing around with it this morning, and I couldn't get it to overheat. I had just replaced the radiator last night when I noticed it was overheating, so that might have just been the new radiator not being full enough to circulate right at that point. The fans seem to be cycling fine. The engine RPM's drop when I turn on the brights, I'll get some more specific info on that, but it's somewhere around 800 RPM normal idle, drops to maybe 6-700 with all the lights going. Like I said the alternator looks original, so I think it's certainly old enough to start going bad.