I understand everyone has their own method. However, what is the best way to hook up the 12volt sources needed for gauges? Piggy back from a fuse out of the block? Splice into a wire?

Thanks

Synth

 

For all of my electronics like that, I run a line directly from the batt to a hi current relay, then tap into a fuse that is switched to control it. That way i can run as many things as I want and don't have to worry about popping fuses or burning up a fuse box. I have seen it happen just from a monster tach.....

 

i do alarms and remote starts for a living. wiring is my life. personally, you do it one of two ways.

method one:

on your fuse panel, there are male blade terminals that are accsessory powered. you can put a female nylon connector on there and just push it on, with a fuse inline.

this method will yeild a very safe and clean looking install. and whenever you turn on the key, your guages come on.

method two:

if you want to get fancy and have the guages come on when you turn on your light switch, you <u>SHOULD</u> do it this way.

find the red with black stripe wire which is the positive parking light wire, and use it to trigger a relay, which sends a 12 volt (which you can find at the fuse panel blade terminals again) when you flip your switch.

so basically your taking a strong 12 volt from the fuse panel, and using the relay as a switch to send it to your guages when your lights are on.

why do it this way? well the designers of the car have very specific limitations in mind when they design the thickness of the wire and the fuses at which the lighting system is rated at. in plain english, do it right and you wont blow fuses or worse, short the wire somewhere. believe me, shorts suck DICK.

heres a diagram of how to wire the relay:



so in closing, those are the two correct ways to do that. the same goes for indiglo guages, they draw too much current for the parking light circuit, its not meant to safely handle it.

happy wiring.
pz

 

For the sending unit all you need is a power when you turn the car on, you can splice into an ignition wire or see this pic. And for the light power, see the pic below.



See all the optional spots, some of these will turn on when you turn the lights on. All you do is wire up a connector and slip it in the spot. Simple and easy. I think one of these slots also has power when you turn the key on also.

 

some of those options come on with lights??

wow. didnt know that!

 

What I did yesterday was to wire the twelve volt to the cigarette lighter where it met the dash, since the accessory 12 volt would not activate right with the guage. I.E. a Voltometer was installed and when only the 12 volt side was plugged in it would give a reading. This should not happen unless the guage was grounded, which it was not. I moved the wire location to the lighter line and the guage stayed off until grounded and on the correct position.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by doublethink &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">some of those options come on with lights??

wow. didnt know that! </TD></TR></TABLE>

Yep, went under the dash last year and just poked around with my multimeter, had a fun day laying upside down

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by doublethink &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">some of those options come on with lights??

wow. didnt know that! </TD></TR></TABLE>

Yup, this was the way I did my boost gauge's dimmer light on my last car. I used a fuse tap and yanked the spade fuse for my parking lights and I put the fuse on one of the fuses blades and I pluged the fuse back in. The other end of the fuse tap has a hole which you can feed a wire through you can either twist it off or you could solder it for a really good connection. It worked pretty good too, but I dont know if any of the electricians out there would wire it up this way.

For anybody wondering what a fuse tap looks like. The right side has the hole that you can feed your wire through. The left side is like a little clip...you can slip a blade fuse in between the clip and plug the fuse back into the fuse box.

 

Awesome, thanks a lot Honda-tech!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by BlueShadow &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> It worked pretty good too, but I dont know if any of the electricians out there would wire it up this way.
</TD></TR></TABLE>

i hate fuse taps, they can fall out, i just dont like them. but what the other guy was saying was to use a nylon female terminal and connecting right to the blades on the fusebox itself, rather then tap off an existing fuse.

its not a good idea to do that. but people do it anyway. and sometimes it works, but in my own car, i dont deal in sometimes-es (made up word?)

 

Whenever I need to tap into my parking lights wiring, the easiest way was to use the signal close to the dimmer switch. Now I don't have gauges galore, (only one) so I didn't think the relay thing was too important, but I appreciate the diagram b/c I did not understand relays when I wired up my air horns. Thanks for the info.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by doublethink &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">i hate fuse taps, they can fall out, i just dont like them. but what the other guy was saying was to use a nylon female terminal and connecting right to the blades on the fusebox itself, rather then tap off an existing fuse.

its not a good idea to do that. but people do it anyway. and sometimes it works, but in my own car, i dont deal in sometimes-es (made up word?)

</TD></TR></TABLE>

When I used them the extra width that the fuse taps added to the blade fuse gave it sort of a friction lock into the socket. It was harder to push the fuse in, but it was also harder to pull the fuse out (for me anyways).

I also used the other method because I had to wire in a 12V source for my water temp gauge. I used another fuse tap and turned it around backwards. The side with the hole went into the empty 12V slot and I took the wire and slid it into he clipped part of the tap.

My wiring was ghetto as hell, but it worked. hehehe The only thing I wasn't sure of was whether I was burning something up or causing some sort of overload or whatever (I'm not an electronics expert).