BINGO Diver300! Yes, that indeed sounds like what I want to do.
Carbonzit: The second scenario - "...you want one terminal to be normally on, the other normally off, and you want this to be reversed when you apply power." And it sounds like the changeover relay that Diver300 suggested will do just that.
Now one more question to be sure this will work for my application. The two pins (87A and 87) sound perfect - there will be one LED light connected to those - the LED light has a low power (brightness) lead and a high power lead - the changeover relay will enable me to switch between the two brightness levels when power is applied to pin 85.
My question is with the power that goes to pin 85. Being that the changeover relay is grounded, it would seem to me that I have to be able to turn on and turn off the power to the wire that goes to pin 85. That's NOT what I want to do (or at least not directly - or in the conventional way). The wire that goes to pin 85 I want to always be hot (connected directly to my 12VDC battery). However, I want to be able to turn the juice on and off, by grounding that wire - let me explain further.......
The dual intensity LED that is powered by pins 87A & 87 is to be switched when I turn blinkers (turn signals) on. This is on a bicycle where in cruising mode I have the dual intensity red LED flashing brightly. When I turn the turn signals (right or left) on, I want the dual intensity red LED light to switch from bright flashing to steady (non-flashing) low intensity. The reason is that all you see is confusion when the bright red LED is flashing wildly along with the turn signal - it doesn't really even look like a turn signal - just looks like confusion. That is why when the turn signals are energized, I would like the brightly flashing red LED to switch to the low-power-steady mode.
But the wire that would go to pin 85 is the same wire that is my HOT lead going to my turn signal flasher (hot wire to the flasher). The second wire from the flasher (only two wires - one in and one out) goes to my turn signal switch (that switch is a three-position rocker switch with the neutral position letting no power out from the switch, push it down one way and left turn signals go on and down the other way and right turn signals energize). So the lead to pin 85 would always be live. Instead of wiring pin 86 to a ground, could I instead connect pin 86 to the input (hot) of my turn signal flasher?
If that is not clear, let me try asking another way: If I have an always hot wire connected to pin 85, if I put a volt meter positive lead to pin 86 and the negative lead to the battery negative terminal - it should read 12VDC - correct? So that means pin 86 is always hot (of course, if it is grounded) - correct? So that in turn should mean that if pin 85 has a wire directly from the batter + terminal, if I connect pin 86 to the hot lead of my flasher - when I complete the flasher circuit by turning either the right or left turn signal on, the changeover relay should reverse pins 87A & 87 - and thereby switch my bright red flashing LED to a low-power-steady burn (obviously the bright flashing red LED will be powered through a separate LED strobing control and the low-power-steady-burn red LED lead would go directly to either pin 87 or 87A (whichever one makes it work correctly)).
Sorry for being so long winded, but I hope this helps to clarify things.
If this is going to work for me, I looked at several of changeover relays - they all seem to be in the 10 to 30 amp range capacity range. My LED lights draw WAY less than one amp. Am I loosing anything by using such a large capacity relay? Or does a 20 amp relay work just as well for me as a smaller one? My suspicion is that the larger capacity relay will work just fine - my only loss might be that it will cost a small amount more (not a huge deal in my book). If not, any suggestions on where to find a 1 amp changeover relay in North America? Or maybe a smaller relay would itself draw less power (my guess not anything significant)?
I sure appreciate the input so far. Thanks big time!